tombola

Note: Italian tombola appears to be a nominal derivative of tombolare "to fall headlong, tumble," a derivative with the verbal suffix -ol- (denoting a modified degree of an action) of tombare "to fall," probably of Germanic origin (see tumble entry 1). The semantic motivation is unclear, however; the suggestion in M. Cortelazzo and P. Zolli, Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana (Bologna, 1988), that the reference is to the falling action of the losers of the game when the winner emerges, is not very convincing. The motivation for the adoption of the word in English is equally unclear, as the Italian game uses numbers, but is not a raffle. French tombola, borrowed from Italian at about the same time as the English word, apparently describes both the Italian game and something resembling the English one, though the evidence for the former appears to be limited to dictionaries.