tun
/tʌn/
"tun" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tun” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #30,265 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #30,265
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops; a wine cask. (See a diagram comparing cask sizes.)
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tun |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tʌn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #30,265 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tun” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for tun is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tʌn/. Corpus data places it at rank #30,265 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
tun has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "TV", "TX", "Ty", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English tunne, tonne (“cask, barrel”), from Old English tunne (“tun, cask, barrel”), from Proto-Germanic *tunnǭ, *tunnō (“tun, barrel, cask”), from Latin tunna, probably of Gaulish origin. Cognate with North Frisian tenn (“tun, barrel, cask”), D… The correct English form is tun, spelled T-U-N.
Definition
- 1A large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops; a wine cask. (See a diagram comparing cask sizes.)
- 2A fermenting vat.
- 3A traditional unit of liquid measure (from the volume of such a cask) equal to 252 wine gallons or 2 pipes.
- 4Synonym of long ton: a unit of mass equal to 2240 pounds, 20 hundredweights of 112 pounds avoirdupois each.
- 5Synonym of ton: any extremely or excessively large amount.
- 6Synonym of drunkard: a person who drinks excessively.
- 7Any shell belonging to Tonna and allied genera.
- 8The cryptobiotic state of a tardigrade, when its metabolism is temporarily suspended.
- 9A small silver cup holding half a pint, sometimes having a whistle in the handle that could not be blown until the cup was empty.
- 10a chimney.
Etymology
From Middle English tunne, tonne (“cask, barrel”), from Old English tunne (“tun, cask, barrel”), from Proto-Germanic *tunnǭ, *tunnō (“tun, barrel, cask”), from Latin tunna, probably of Gaulish 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 Old French tonne, French 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.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “tun”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-U-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /tʌn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “TV” - see the side-by-side comparison. tun vs TV
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.