[f. as prec. + -IST.] A performer on the tight (or slack) rope, a rope-walker, a rope-dancer.

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1793.  Looker-on, No. 80, ¶ 3. What man will withhold from the funambulist the praise of justice, who considers his inflexible uprightness?

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1824.  Heber, Jrnl. (ed. 2), II. xx. 334. Tricks which proved him to be a funambulist of considerable merit.

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1847–8.  De Quincey, Protestantism, Wks. VIII. 95. That would be a sad task for the most skilful of funambulists or theological tumblers.

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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.

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  So Funambulism [see -ISM], rope-walking.

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1824.  De Quincey, Conversation, Wks. 1890, X. 280. A sort of monster hired to play tricks of funambulism for the night.

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1886.  A. Jessopp, in Athenæum, 20 Feb., 264. Horrible lessons of ghastly grammar and dreary funambulism yclept analysis of the sentence.

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