Bubba held up a plastic sample bag containing asphalt crumblings.    From Wordnik.com.  [Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine]

Eisenhower had won office by virtue of his own popularity and the first crumblings of the Solid South.    From Wordnik.com.  [Carter on His Own] Reference

Now that I have reviled you for the blow that sent me staggering among peelings and crumblings and old scraps of meat.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Waves] Reference

Sophia exclaimed in surprise; for the room beyond had been swept clean of all but the most recent crumblings of plaster.    From Wordnik.com.  [Asimov's Science Fiction]

But recent crumblings at Chumley's, Ward's Bakery and other edifices have driven the point home, and made me wonder what other addresses may be in iminent danger.    From Wordnik.com.  [Archive 2007-05-01] Reference

We understand with difficulty these emigrations, these crumblings into morsels of our mind.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Mind and the Brain Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps] Reference

In them I searched for crumblings of my cakes, and found a good many, so that I was not that ill off.    From Wordnik.com.  [Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895] Reference

But I found nothing but calcareous marl, or basaltic chippings and crumblings, some of cream colour, some lavender, some purple, some red-brown, some nearly black.    From Wordnik.com.  [Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846] Reference

The materials of which they are made were probably once, long, long ago, the crumblings from granite and other crystallized rocks, but they show now no signs of crystallization.    From Wordnik.com.  [Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky] Reference

And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority challenged before his own children -- it would be the beginning of dissolution, the first crumblings of collapse.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Homesteaders A Novel of the Canadian West] Reference

Then Noodle, opening the petals of the Burning Rose as it lay upon the heart of Melilot, drew out honey from its centre, filling his hand with the golden crumblings of fragrance; and he leapt upon the.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Field of Clover] Reference

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in flood.    From Wordnik.com.  [Famous Modern Ghost Stories] Reference

Blank I call it, but it was figured over with the patches that please a painter, repaired breaches, crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick that had turned pink with time; and a few thin trees, with the poles of certain rickety trellises, were visible over the top.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Aspern Papers] Reference

And yet so great was Todd's care over the outside fittings of the house -- details which were necessarily in evidence, and which determined at a glance the quality of the folks inside -- that these several crumblings, shake-downs, and shrinkages were seldom noticed by the passer-by.    From Wordnik.com.  [Kennedy Square] Reference

Honorius, were unequal to the task of governing the empire, and it fell into the hands of the barbarians, who ruthlessly marched over the crumblings ruins, regardless of the treasures of the classic soil and of the guardians which Christianity presented in the presence of protesting bishops.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Old Roman World, : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization.] Reference

Faint, constant crumblings and tricklings.    From Wordnik.com.  [NPR Topics: News]

Are as light dust and crumblings from mine urn.    From Wordnik.com.  [Atalanta in Calydon] Reference

And gathering tears, and crumblings of distress.    From Wordnik.com.  [The American Union Speaker] Reference

Wall crumblings everywhere.    From Wordnik.com.  [After the Flood] Reference

Avalanche crumblings.    From Wordnik.com.  [Durangoherald.com] Reference

But the more important fact, that his nature is not levelled, like a mosquito's, to the mists of a marsh, nor reduced, like a mole's, beneath the crumblings of a burrow, but has been endowed with sense to discern, and instinct to adopt, the conditions which will make of it the best that can be, is very necessarily ignored by philosophers who propose, as a beautiful fulfilment of human destinies, a life entertained by scientific gossip, in a cellar lighted by electric sparks, warmed by tubular inflation, drained by buried rivers, and fed, by the ministry of less learned and better provisioned races, with extract of beef, and potted crocodile.    From Wordnik.com.  [Our Fathers Have Told Us Part I. The Bible of Amiens] Reference