Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A unit of weight equal to 2,000 pounds (0.907 metric ton or 907.18 kilograms).
  • noun A unit of weight equal to 2,240 pounds (1.016 metric tons or 1,016.05 kilograms).
  • noun A metric ton.
  • noun A unit of capacity for cargo in maritime shipping, normally estimated at 40 cubic feet.
  • noun A unit of internal capacity of a ship equal to 100 cubic feet.
  • noun A unit for measuring the displacement of ships, equal to 35 cubic feet, and supposed to equal the volume taken by a long ton of seawater.
  • noun A large extent, amount, or number.
  • noun Used adverbially with a or in the plural to mean “to a great degree or extent” or “frequently”.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The prevailing mode; high fashion; style; air of fashion. See bon-ton.
  • See tone.
  • noun A form of -town, being the word town used in place-names, as Ashton, Hampton, Wolverton, Merton.
  • noun A Middle English plural of toe.
  • noun A cask; hence, a measure of capacity used for wine. See tun, 1.
  • noun A measure of capacity: used
  • noun for timber. 40 feet of oak or ash timber, sometimes 48 or 50 feet of hewn
  • noun for flour, 8 sacks or 10 barrels
  • noun for potatoes, 10 to 36 bushels
  • noun for wheat, 20 bushels
  • noun for earth or gravel, 1 cubie yard, sometimes 23 cubic feet
  • noun for grindstones, 15 cubic feet
  • noun for Portland stone, 16 cubic feet
  • noun for salt, 42 bushels
  • noun for lime, 40 bushels
  • noun for coke, 28 bushels
  • noun for the carrying capacity of a ship, 40 cubic feet (this is what is called the actual tonnage: See tonnage).
  • noun A measure of weight, equal to 20 hundred-weight or 2,240 pounds avoirdupois (the long ton), or in the United States to 2,000 pounds (the short ton).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The prevailing fashion or mode; vogue.
  • noun See in the Vocabulary.
  • pl. of toe.
  • noun (Com.) A measure of weight or quantity.
  • noun The weight of twenty hundredweight.
  • noun (Naut. & Com.) Forty cubic feet of space, being the unit of measurement of the burden, or carrying capacity, of a vessel; as a vessel of 300 tons burden.
  • noun (Naut. & Com.) A certain weight or quantity of merchandise, with reference to transportation as freight; as, six hundred weight of ship bread in casks, seven hundred weight in bags, eight hundred weight in bulk; ten bushels of potatoes; eight sacks, or ten barrels, of flour; forty cubic feet of rough, or fifty cubic feet of hewn, timber, etc.
  • noun (Zoöl.) The common tunny, or horse mackerel.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Fashion, the current style, the vogue.
  • noun Fashionable society; those in style.
  • noun A unit of weight (mass) equal to 2240 pounds (a long ton) or 2000 pounds (a short ton) or 1000 kilograms (a metric ton).
  • noun A unit of volume; register ton.
  • noun In refrigeration and air conditioning, a unit of thermal power defined as 12,000 BTU/h (about 3.514 kW or 3024 kcal/h), originally the rate of cooling provided by uniform isothermal melting of one short ton of ice per day at 32 °F (0 °C).
  • noun colloquial, hyperbolic A large amount.
  • noun slang A speed of 100 mph.
  • noun slang One hundred pounds sterling.
  • noun cricket One hundred runs.
  • noun darts One hundred points.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a British unit of weight equivalent to 2240 pounds
  • noun a United States unit of weight equivalent to 2000 pounds

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English tonne, a measure of weight; see tun.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French ton ("manner"), from Latin tonus.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Variant of tun ("cask").

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  • Cricket jargon - one hundred runs, equivalent to a century.

    December 1, 2007

  • Also the height of fashion or taste.

    October 15, 2008