tank
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Portuguese tanque (“tank, liquid container”), from an Indo-Aryan language such as Gujarati ટાંકી (ṭā̃kī, “cistern”) or Marathi टांकी (ṭāṅkī). Compare the Arabic verb اِسْتَنْقَعَ (istanqaʕa, “to become stagnant, to stagnate”).
In the sense of armoured vehicle, first attested in 1915, prototypes were described as tanks for carrying water to disguise their nature as well as due to physical resemblance.
Noun
tank (plural tanks)
- A closed container for liquids or gases.
- The propane is stored in these tanks.
- The tank contains unfiltered water. You really shouldn't drink from that.
- An open container or pool for storing water or other liquids.
- The contractors installed a new tank with gorgeous fish and corals.
- The ore slurries are directed into an open tank outside the excavation site.
- A pond, pool, or small lake (either natural or artificial).[1]
- 1896, Henry Lawson, Out Back:
- The tanks are full and the grass is high.
- The fuel reservoir of a vehicle.
- We have brought the van to a garage after we found a leak in the tank.
- The amount held by a container; a tankful.
- I burned three tanks of gas on the drive to New York.
- An armoured fighting vehicle, armed with a gun designed for direct fire, and moving on caterpillar tracks.
- The journalist mistook the self-propelled artillery vehicle for a tank.
- Few remember the female tanks that were produced between the World Wars.
- 2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: The Ark:
- Tank beats everything! Oh, man! I could do this all day!
- (Australia, India) A reservoir or dam.
- (botany) A structure of tightly overlapping leaves used by some bromeliads to retain water.
- (colloquial) A very muscular and physically imposing person; somebody who is built like a tank.
- (UK, slang, dated, by extension) A bouncer or doorman.
- (roleplaying games, board games, video games) A unit or character designed primarily around damage absorption and holding the attention of the enemy (as opposed to dealing damage, healing, or other tasks).
- The paladin can make for a decent tank, but I recommend that you get a class with better taunting skills.
- (US, slang) A prison cell, or prison generally.
- The sheriff threw us in the tank without charges!
- 1985 April 13, Philip Brasfield, “Echoes Inside of What's Outside”, in Gay Community News, page 4:
- By the nature of imprisonment, one is perceived by free society as something subhuman. By the nature of being on a protective custody tank, a "gay tank", everyone there is seen as members of the lowest caste in the system.
- 1987, Shane MacGowan, Jem Finer (lyrics and music), “Fairytale of New York”, in If I Should Fall from Grace with God, performed by The Pogues ft. Kirsty MacColl:
- It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank / An old man said to me, “Won't see another one”
- (poker, slang) A metaphorical place where a player goes to contemplate a decision; see in the tank.
- (rail transport) Short for tank engine and tank locomotive.
- 1941 September, “The Why and the Wherefore: The Longest Tank Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, pages 431–432:
- Before their conversion to 4-6-0 tender locomotives, the L.B. & S.C.R. Baltic tank engines Nos. 330 to 334 measured 50 ft. 5 in. over buffers; the nearest present approach to this figure is the 49 ft. 10½ in. of the remaining ex-Lancashire & Yorkshire Hughes type 4-cylinder 4-6-4 tanks of the L.M.S.R. The Furness and G. & S.W.R. 4-6-4 tanks of the same company, all now scrapped, were, respectively, 49 ft. 1½ in. and 47 ft. 8 in. long.
- 1952 February, R. A. H. Weight, “A Railway Recorder in Wessex”, in Railway Magazine, page 133:
- Representing the older types now are some Stroudley 0-6-0 tanks, while a Drummond "C14" 0-4-0 tank might still be pottering about on the Town Quays as of yore.
- (clothing) Short for tank top.
- 2008, Nora Roberts, Tribute, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN, page 206:
- It pleased her more than she could say to know she walked on her own land, over dewed grass, wearing a tank and cotton pajama pants.
- 2022, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation, Minneapolis, Minn.: Broadleaf Books, 1517 Media, →ISBN:
- I was wearing a tank and some cotton pants.
- 2023 August 9, Brooke Kato, “Gen Z loves the ‘wife beater’ tee — but they’re canceling the name”, in New York Post, New York, N.Y.: News Corp, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-08-10:
- On TikTok, #wifepleaser boasts more than 11.4 million views, while #wifepleasertank has racked up 13.9 million. […] Thanks to TikTok, there has been a mass adoption of the term “wife pleaser” in an attempt to rebrand the tank.
Synonyms
- (military fighting vehicle): battle tank, combat tank, armour (mass noun), tango (Canadian military slang)
Antonyms
- (antonym(s) of “gaming”): glass cannon
Hypernyms
- (military fighting vehicle): armoured fighting vehicle, armored fighting vehicle, AFV, armoured combat vehicle, armored combat vehicle
Hyponyms
- (military fighting vehicle): infantry tank (historical), cavalry tank (historical), fast tank (historical), cruiser tank (historical), superheavy tank (historical), tankette (historical), bobbin tank (historical), light tank, medium tank, heavy tank, main battle tank, MBT, flail tank, flame tank, flamethrower tank
Coordinate terms
- (military fighting vehicle): armoured car, armoured train, armoured personnel carrier, armored personnel carrier, APC, infantry fighting vehicle, IFV, self-propelled gun, SPG, tank destroyer, assault gun
Derived terms
Terms derived from tank (noun)
- antitank
- anti-tank
- ballast tank
- battle tank
- bobbin tank
- built like a tank
- buoyancy tank
- cavalry tank
- combat tank
- cruiser tank
- dipping tank
- drop tank
- drunk tank
- dunk tank
- empty the tank
- expansion tank
- fast tank
- female tank
- fish tank
- flail tank
- flame tank
- flamethrower tank
- flotation tank
- gas tank
- gunbarrel tank
- heavy tank
- holding tank
- Imhoff tank
- infantry tank
- in the tank
- isolation tank
- landing craft tank
- leave nothing in the tank
- light tank
- main battle tank
- male tank
- medium tank
- oxygen tank
- Pachuca tank
- pannier tank
- peekaboo tank top
- petrol tank
- retention tank
- saddle tank, saddletank
- septic tank
- settlement tank
- side tank
- sugar in one's tank
- sump tank
- superheavy tank
- surge tank
- tankbuster
- tank car
- tank controls
- tank destroyer
- tank drama
- tank engine
- tanker
- tankette
- tank farm
- tankful
- tankini
- tank iron
- tank killer
- tanklike
- tank loaf
- tank locomotive
- tank park
- tankship
- tankside
- tank sinker
- tank-sinker
- tank slapper
- tank-slapper
- tank-stand
- tankstand, tank stand
- tank suit
- tank top
- tank town
- tank town
- tank trap
- tank truck
- tank ventilator
- tank wagon
- tank-worm
- think tank
- tiger in one's tank
- Tissot tank
- touch tank
- tumbler tank
- water tank
- Yank tank
Descendants
Descendants
- → Afrikaans: tenk
- → Albanian: tank
- → Assamese: টেংকি (teṅki)
- → Asturian: tanque
- → Azerbaijani: tank
- → Bashkir: танк (tank)
- → Belarusian: танк (tank)
- → Bengali: ট্যাংক (ṭêṅko)
- → Burmese: တင့်ကား (tang.ka:)
- → Buryat: танк (tank)
- → Catalan: tanc
- → Chechen: танк (tank)
- → Chinese:
- Mandarin: 坦克 (tǎnkè)
- → Chuvash: танк (tank)
- → Czech: tank
- → Danish: tank
- → Dutch: tank
- → Dzongkha: ཏེངཀ (tengk)
- → Eastern Mari: танк (tank)
- → Estonian: tank
- → Fiji Hindi: tanki
- → Finnish: tankki
- → French: tank
- → Galician: tanque
- → Georgian: ტანკი (ṭanḳi)
- → German: Tank
- → Greek: τανκ (tank)
- → Greenlandic: tanki
- → Hebrew: טנק (tank)
- → Hindi: टंकी (ṭaṅkī)
- → Burmese: တိုင်ကီ (tuingki)
- → Indonesian: tank
- → Italian: tank, tanca
- → Japanese: タンク (tanku)
- → Kazakh: танк (tank)
- → Korean: 탱크 (taengkeu)
- → Kumyk: танк (tank)
- → Kyrgyz: танк (tank)
- → Latvian: tanks
- → Lezgi: танк (tank)
- → Lithuanian: tankas
- → Macedonian: тенк (tenk)
- → Malay: tank
- → Maori: taika
- → Norwegian: tank, tanks
- → Ossetian: танк (tank)
- → Persian: تانک (tânk)
- → Portuguese: tanque (“armored vehicle”)
- → Quechua: tanki
- → Romanian: tanc
- → Romansch: tanc
- → Russian: танк (tank), танкъ (tank) — Pre-reform orthography (1918)
- → Carpathian Rusyn: танк (tank)
- → Serbo-Croatian:
- → Sidamo: tanke
- → Slovak: tank
- → Slovene: tank
- → Swahili: tangi
- → Tajik: танк (tank), тонк (tonk)
- → Tamil: தாங்கி (tāṅki)
- → Tatar: танк (tank)
- → Tokelauan: tane
- → Turkish: tank
- → Turkmen: tank
- → Ukrainian: танк (tank)
- → Upper Sorbian: tank
- → Urdu: ٹینک (ṭaink)
- → Uzbek: tank
- → Vietnamese: xe tăng
- → Walloon: tank
- → Welsh: tanc
- → Yakut: тааҥка (taañka)
- → Yiddish: טאַנק (tank)
Translations
closed container for fluids
|
open container for liquids
|
pond, pool, or small lake, natural or artificial
|
fuel reservoir
|
tankful — see tankful
armoured fighting vehicle
|
large metal container for water
|
muscular and physically imposing person
|
Verb
tank (third-person singular simple present tanks, present participle tanking, simple past and past participle tanked)
- To fail or fall (often used in describing the economy or the stock market); to degenerate or decline rapidly; to plummet.
- 2008 October, Davy Rothbart, “How I caught up with dad”, in Men's Health, volume 23, number 8, →ISSN, page 112:
- He told me about all the odd jobs he'd taken after I was born, when Michigan's economy was tanking. For one, he crisscrossed the Midwest buying old carpets from dentists' offices.
- 2022 October 5, “Network News: Private sector's role in a publicly-owned railway”, in RAIL, number 967, page 16:
- "[...] If the economy has tanked... then we don't want to over-promise and under-deliver."
- (video games) To attract the attacks of an enemy target in cooperative team-based combat, so that one's teammates can defeat the enemy in question more efficiently.
- (transitive) To put (fuel, etc.) into a tank.
- 1913, Geoffrey Martin, Industrial and manufacturing chemistry:
- Sometimes oils are tanked for months or years at a time (e.g., linseed oil).
- To deliberately lose a sports match with the intent of gaining a perceived future competitive advantage.
- 2006 March 6, Michael Farber, “Swede Success”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), Sports Illustrated, archived from the original on 4 November 2012:
- Beforehand, Swedish [national ice hockey team] coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson had ruminated about tanking against Slovakia to avoid powerful Canada or the Czechs in the quarters [i.e., quarterfinals of the 2006 Winter Olympic tournament], telling Swedish television, "One is cholera, the other the plague."
- (fandom slang) To resist damage; to be attacked without being hurt.
- (originally poker, slang) To contemplate a decision for a long time; to go in the tank.
- To put or keep in a tank.
- Concrete below ground must be fully tanked to prevent water uptake.
Derived terms
Translations
to fail or fall
|
video games: to attract the attacks of an enemy target in cooperative team-based combat
to put into a tank
to deliberately lose a sports match with the intent of gaining a perceived future competitive advantage.
to resist damage; to be attacked without being hurt.
References
- “tank”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
Etymology 2
Noun
tank (plural tanks)
References
- “tank”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- 1858, Peter Lund Simmonds, The Dictionary of Trade Products
Etymology 3
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Verb
tank (third-person singular simple present tanks, present participle tanking, simple past and past participle tanked)
Related terms
Further reading
Anagrams
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