1
: a large cask especially for wine
2
: any of various units of liquid capacity
especially : one equal to 252 gallons

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 Under stressful conditions, with cysteine unavailable to the free radicals being produced, the tardigrades couldn’t form tuns. Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 17 Jan. 2024 The yield of the mine is about 500,000 tuns annually, valued at ten dollars per tun. Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 23 Apr. 2021 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

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tun.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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

Time Traveler
The first known use of tun was before the 12th century

Dictionary Entries Near tun

Cite this Entry

“Tun.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tun. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

More from Merriam-Webster on tun

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!