Obs. Forms: 4–5 tomblester, -stre, tomblister(e, 5 tumbelyster. [Feminine of TUMBLER: see -STER, and the earlier form TUMBESTER.] A female tumbler or dancer; a dancing-girl.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Pard. T., 15 (Lansd. MS.). And riht anone þan come tomblesters [so Pelw.; Corpus tomblisteres] Fetis and smal and ȝonge fruytsters.
14[?]. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 616/47. Tornatrix, a tumbelyster.
1844. G. P. R. James, Agincourt, I. 233. Who ever heard of King before who troubled his nobility about minstrels and tomblesteres? Ibid. (1850), Old Oak Chest, I. 125. To make the contortions of their ‘saltimbanks’ and ‘tomblesteres’ act as a sort of argument or introduction to what was to follow.
