Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A large cask for liquids, especially wine.
- n. A measure of liquid capacity, especially one equivalent to approximately 252 gallons (954 liters).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An amended spelling of ton.
- n. A large cask for holding liquids, especially wine, ale, or beer. See ton.
- n. Any vessel; a jar.
- n. In a brewery, the fermenting-vat or -tank.
- n. A measure of capacity, equal by old statutes to 252 wine-gallons. There was a local tun of beer in London of 2 butts, and a customary tun of sweet oil was 236 gallons, and of syrup 3½ barrels. As all measures of capacity are regarded by metrologists as having been defined first by weight, some have supposed the tun was originally a short ton weight of water.
- n. In conchology, a shell of the genus Dolium or family Doliidæ; a tun-shell.
- n. The upper part of a chimney; also, the chimney itself.
- To store in a tun or tuns, as wine or malt liquor; hence, to store in vessels of any sort for keeping.
- To fill as if a tun.
- To mingle with liquor when it is stored, as for the purpose of flavoring it, or making it keep better.
- n. An obsolete form of town.
Wiktionary
- n. A large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops; a wine cask.
- n. A fermenting vat.
- n. An English measure of capacity for liquids, containing 252 wine gallons; equal to two pipes.
- n. A weight of 2,240 pounds.
- n. An indefinite large quantity.
- n. A drunkard; so called humorously, or in contempt.
- n. Any shell belonging to Dolium and allied genera; called also tun-shell.
- pro. your (second-person singular possessive pronoun)
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops; a wine cask.
- n. A fermenting vat.
- n. A certain measure for liquids, as for wine, equal to two pipes, four hogsheads, or 252 gallons. In different countries, the tun differs in quantity.
- n. A weight of 2,240 pounds. See Ton.
- n. An indefinite large quantity.
- n. A drunkard; -- so called humorously, or in contempt.
- n. Any shell belonging to Dolium and allied genera; -- called also
tun-shell . - v. To put into tuns, or casks.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a large cask especially one holding a volume equivalent to 2 butts or 252 gals
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old English tunne, possibly of Celtic origin.
Examples
“Back on the local (non-EC2) workstation, set up the software: sudo apt-get install - y openvpn sudo modprobe tun sudo iptables - I OUTPUT - o tun+ - j ACCEPT sudo iptables - I INPUT - i tun+ - j ACCEPT”
“Later the village was surrounded by a wall called a tun, and by a transfer of terms the village frequently came to be called a mark, or tun, later changed to town.”
“-- A tun is a certain measure for liquids, as for wine, and its capacity equals two pipes, or four hogsheads, or 252 gallons.”
Golden Days for Boys and Girls Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892
“In the case of Sam Adams, where the production of beer isn't that large, the brew kettle is usually just the mash kettle or the mash tun, which is rinsed out in preparation for the addition of the wort.”
“The fraught of these prouisions for a man, will be about halfe a tun, which is12 l. 10s. 10d.”
“If drought strikes, they essentially shut down their metabolism and shrivel up into a ball called a tun, waiting until water returns.”
“I thought the name was Anglo-Saxon for the topographical feature of the Humber River and "tun" or "ton", meaning farm or homestead.”
“Thus Ea-ton, a name scattered all along the Thames, from its very source to the last reaches, is the "tun" by the water or stream.”
“When the block-house and palisade enclosed the farm of a single settler the "tun," in its still earlier sense, was even more nearly reproduced.”
The Winning of the West, Volume 1 From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776
“Wokings, and Wellington the 'tun' of the Wellings.”
A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tun’.
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Beer and Brewing
Words about beer and the making of it.
airlock, bung, carboy, diversol, hops, mashtun, beer, sparge, trub, wort, malt, malt liquor and 184 more...
sionnach Oh, c'mon, hh - use your noggin! Sep 24, 2009
hernesheir Don't even ask me, as an American, to calculate how many gills (imperial unit of volume for liquid measure, equal to one-quarter of a pint or five fluid ounces 0.142 litre it would take to equal a hogshead, a pin, kilderin, butt, puncheon or a firkin)! I've trouble enough converting liters to ounces or gallons and vice-versa! And don't we all, I say? Sep 24, 2009
bilby How many firkin hogsheads do you want it to be, punk?! Sep 24, 2009
sionnach How many hogsheads make up a tun? Or, for that matter, how many firkins?
and that Beer Glossary 'definition' totally blows. Sep 24, 2009
hernesheir "There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of a fat old man; a tun of man is thy companion."
Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1, II. iv. line 498. Sep 24, 2009
hernesheir
Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me.
– Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1880
Sep 15, 2009
bilby
Old wine to drink!
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
And ripened 'neath the blink
Of India's sun!
- Robert Hinckley Messinger, 'A Winter Wish'. Sep 15, 2009
john "Any large vessel used in brewing. In America, the term 'tub' is more commonly used."
- Beer Glossary Oct 7, 2007