tun
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "tun", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "tun" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "tun" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
tun is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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.) Pronounced /tʌn/. Often confused with TV and TX.
| 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) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for tun is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, 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.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for tun in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "TV", "TX", "Ty", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
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… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is tun, spelled T-U-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
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
Frequency rank: #30,265 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: