Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A large, often metallic container for holding or storing liquids or gases.
  • noun The amount that this container can hold.
  • noun A usually artificial pool, pond, reservoir, or cistern, especially one used to hold water for drinking or for irrigation.
  • noun An enclosed, heavily armored combat vehicle that is armed with cannon and machine guns and moves on continuous tracks.
  • noun A tank top.
  • noun Slang A jail or jail cell.
  • intransitive verb To place, store, or process in a tank.
  • intransitive verb Informal To suffer a sudden decline or failure.
  • idiom (in the tank) In reserve.
  • idiom (in the tank) In a state of decline or failure.
  • idiom (in the tank) Enthusiastically partial; strongly favoring.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The wild parsnip, Peucedanum (Pastinaca) sativum.
  • To throw, or cause to flow, into a tank.
  • To put or plunge into a tank; bathe or steep in a tank.
  • noun A pool of deep water, natural or artificial.
  • noun A large vessel or structure of wood or metal designed to hold water, oil, or other liquid, or a gas.
  • noun In the East Indies, a storage-place for water; a reservoir. Such tanks are used especially for irrigation; but they also serve for storage of water for all purposes during the dry season. Some of them are of great extent, and form lakes, conforming to the natural shape of the ground and covering thousands of acres; others are of square or other regular shape, and form decorative features in pleasure-grounds.
  • To fill up (with liquor); hence, to be drunk: usually with up.
  • noun In glass manufacturing, same as tank-furnace (which see, under furnace).
  • noun The stomach.
  • noun A variant of tang and tang.
  • An oral abbreviation for hyperbolic tangent (which see), being an accommodated pronunciation of the written abbreviation tanh.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A large basin or cistern; an artificial receptacle for liquids.
  • noun A pond, pool, or small lake, natural or artificial.
  • noun (Mil.) a heavily armored combat vehicle which moves on caterpillar treads, rather than wheels. It typically carries a cannon and a heavy machine, and sometimes other weapons. It is the main distinguishing weapon of an armored division.
  • noun a jail cell for temporarily holding prisoners, as in a police station.
  • noun a locomotive which carries the water and fuel it requires, thus dispensing with a tender.
  • noun plate iron thinner than boiler plate, and thicker than sheet iron or stovepipe iron.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a small nematoid worm found in the water tanks of India, supposed by some to be the young of the Guinea worm.
  • noun A small Indian dry measure, averaging 240 grains in weight; also, a Bombay weight of 72 grains, for pearls.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A container for liquids or gases.
  • noun The fuel reservoir of a vehicle.
  • noun The amount held by a container; a tankful.
  • noun An armoured fighting vehicle, armed with a gun in a turret, and moving on caterpillar tracks.
  • noun A reservoir or dam.
  • noun A large metal container, usually placed near a wind-driven water pump, in an animal pen or field. By extension a small pond for the same purpose.
  • noun slang A very muscular and physically imposing person. Somebody who is built like a tank.
  • noun gaming, video games, online gaming In online and offline role-playing games, a character designed primarily around damage absorption and holding the attention of the enemy with offensive power as a close secondary consideration.
  • verb To fail or fall (often used in describing the economy or the stock market); to degenerate or decline rapidly; to plummet.
  • verb 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.
  • verb To put fuel into a tank
  • verb To deliberately lose a sports match with the intent of gaining a perceived future competitive advantage.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb treat in a tank
  • verb consume excessive amounts of alcohol
  • noun an enclosed armored military vehicle; has a cannon and moves on caterpillar treads
  • noun as much as a tank will hold
  • noun a freight car that transports liquids or gases in bulk

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Partly from Gujarati tānkh, cistern (from Sanskrit taḍāgaḥ, pond, perhaps of Dravidian origin) and partly from Portuguese tanque, reservoir (variant of estanque, from estancar, to dam up, from Vulgar Latin *stanticāre; see stanch).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Portuguese tanque ("tank, liquid container"), originally from Indian vernacular for a large artificial water reservoir, cistern, pool, etc., for example, Gujarati ટાંકી (ṭāṅkī), or Marathi  (take). Compare the Arabic verb استنقع (istanqáʕa, "to become stagnant, to stagnate").

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