Somʹerset or Somersault

A leap in which a person turns head over heels in the air and lights on his feet. (Latin, super saltus; French, soubresaut.) Sometimes a person will turn twice or thrice in the air before he touches the ground.

“First that could make love faces, or could do

The valter’s sombersalts.”

Donne: Poems, p. 300.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.