Crossword Dictionary
rumbled
rumbled - If someone is rumbled, the truth about them or something they were trying to hideis discovered.
in a sentence
When his fraud was rumbled he had just £20.17 in the bank.
When he was rumbled by police, he fled and stayed on the run in hotels for three nights before he was finally caught.
I'm afraid our little tax dodge has been rumbled.
They knew they had been rumbled.
They parked up among some bombed-out ruins, assuming that they had been rumbled.
origin
[In] an extract from "The Canting Academy" from 1674 ( a dictionary of the Thieves' Cant) and noticed the word "Rumboyle" was Cant for a Ward or Watch(man). This was followed later by the following:
"Romboyl’d Sought after with a Warrant"
This encapsulates the meaning of the slang word "rumble" as in "You've been rumbled, mate." familiar to anyone brought up on the Sweeney. (Itself from a later version of Cant, Cockney Rhyming Slang: Sweeney, Sweeney Todd, Flying Squad. Would you Adam an' Eve it?). There does not appear to be a rhyming element in cant, as the "rum" part seems to recur with a meaning of "well-to-do" or similar.