[f. as prec. + -IST.] A performer on the tight (or slack) rope, a rope-walker, a rope-dancer.
1793. Looker-on, No. 80, ¶ 3. What man will withhold from the funambulist the praise of justice, who considers his inflexible uprightness?
1824. Heber, Jrnl. (ed. 2), II. xx. 334. Tricks which proved him to be a funambulist of considerable merit.
18478. De Quincey, Protestantism, Wks. VIII. 95. That would be a sad task for the most skilful of funambulists or theological tumblers.
1896. Daily News, 1 Sept., 3. A Funambulist is a gentleman who on a rope turns sommersaults, leaps thro a ring, and plays on a fiddle while whirling like a Catharine wheel.
So Funambulism [see -ISM], rope-walking.
1824. De Quincey, Conversation, Wks. 1890, X. 280. A sort of monster hired to play tricks of funambulism for the night.
1886. A. Jessopp, in Athenæum, 20 Feb., 264. Horrible lessons of ghastly grammar and dreary funambulism yclept analysis of the sentence.