tun

noun

ˈtən 

1

: a large cask especially for wine

2

: any of various units of liquid capacity

especially : one equal to 252 gallons

Synonyms

• barrel
• butt
• cask
• firkin
• hogshead
• keg
• kilderkin
• pipe
• puncheon
• rundlet
• runlet

Examples of tun in a Sentence

in olden days an English ship's capacity was measured by the number of tuns of wine it could hold

Recent Examples on the Web

The yield of the mine is about 500,000 tuns annually, valued at ten dollars per tun. —Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 23 Apr. 2021

This is induced when the animal is frozen or desiccated and the creature enters a state of low metabolic activity called a tun. —The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 22 Dec. 2021

The first baseman went two-for-three with one tun scored. —oregonlive, 3 June 2022

The agaves are cut into one inch cubes and then cooked for seven hours in a heated mash tun equipped with a stream jacket. —Joseph V Micallef, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2021

In a commercial brewhouse, the grain is cracked in a mill then sent through a grist case, which dispenses it into a vessel called the mash tun. —oregonlive, 20 Feb. 2020

Forks clank down, sleeves roll up, and diners file into the abutting bodega to fill their glasses with cool, foamy sagardo straight from the 5,000-gallon tun. —Benjamin Kemper, Condé Nast Traveler, 16 Feb. 2018

All the remaining grain falls to the bottom of the stainless steel tun, creating a grain bed through which the liquid passes on its way back to the mash kettle. —Tara Massouleh, AL.com, 31 May 2017

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Word History

Etymology

Middle English tonne, tunne, from Old English & Anglo-French; Old English, from Medieval Latin tunna; Anglo-French tone, tonne, from Medieval Latin

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1