Definitions

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

  • noun A large cask for liquids, especially wine.
  • noun A measure of liquid capacity, especially one equivalent to approximately 252 gallons (954 liters).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An amended spelling of ton.
  • noun A large cask for holding liquids, especially wine, ale, or beer. See ton.
  • noun Any vessel; a jar.
  • noun In a brewery, the fermenting-vat or -tank.
  • noun A measure of capacity, equal by old statutes to 252 wine-gallons.
  • noun In conchology, a shell of the genus Dolium or family Doliidæ; a tun-shell.
  • noun 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.
  • noun An obsolete form of town.

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

  • noun A large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops; a wine cask.
  • noun (Brewing) A fermenting vat.
  • noun 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.
  • noun (Com.), rare A weight of 2,240 pounds. See Ton.
  • noun An indefinite large quantity.
  • noun A drunkard; -- so called humorously, or in contempt.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any shell belonging to Dolium and allied genera; -- called also tun-shell.
  • transitive verb To put into tuns, or casks.

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

  • noun A large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops; a wine cask.
  • noun brewing A fermenting vat.
  • noun An old English measure of capacity for liquids, containing 252 wine gallons; equal to two pipes.
  • noun A weight of 2,240 pounds.
  • noun An indefinite large quantity.
  • noun archaic A drunkard.
  • noun zoology Any shell belonging to Dolium and allied genera; called also tun-shell.
  • verb transitive To put into tuns, or casks.

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

  • noun a large cask especially one holding a volume equivalent to 2 butts or 252 gals

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English tunne, possibly of Celtic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English tunne, tonne ("cask, barrel"), from Old English tunne ("tun, cask, barrel"), from Proto-Germanic *tunnōn, *tunnō (“tun, barrel, cask”), of unknown origin. Cognate with North Frisian tenn ("tun, barrel, cask"), Dutch ton ("tun, barrel, cask"), German Tonne ("tun, barrel, drum"), Danish tønde ("barrel"), Swedish tunna ("barrel, cask, tun"), Icelandic tunna ("barrel"). Compare also French tonne, tonneau ("ton", "barrel"), Medieval Latin tunna ("cask"), Middle Irish tunna ("cask"), Welsh tynell ("tun, barrel"). It is uncertain whether the Germanic or the Celtic forms are the original.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Any large vessel used in brewing. In America, the term 'tub' is more commonly used."

    - Beer Glossary

    October 7, 2007

  • 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'.

    September 16, 2009

  • 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

    September 16, 2009

  • "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.

    September 24, 2009

  • How many hogsheads make up a tun? Or, for that matter, how many firkins?

    and that Beer Glossary 'definition' totally blows.

    September 24, 2009

  • How many firkin hogsheads do you want it to be, punk?!

    September 24, 2009

  • 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?

    September 24, 2009

  • Oh, c'mon, hh - use your noggin!

    September 24, 2009

  • See tardigrades.

    November 21, 2015