tank

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A large container for holding liquid or gas.

   Our water tank holds about a thousand litres.

2. 2
   noun

   A heavy armoured military vehicle that moves on metal tracks and carries a large gun.

   The soldiers watched as the tanks rolled across the border.

3. 3
   noun

   The part of a vehicle that holds its fuel.

   We stopped at the garage to fill up the tank before the long drive.

4. 4
   noun

   A glass container of water for keeping fish.

   He keeps tropical fish in a tank in the living room.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Tank entered early seventeenth-century English as a name for a pool in India, going back to Sanskrit tadāga, “pond,” probably with influence from Portuguese tangue, also meaning “pond.” By the end of that century it meant a container for liquid. In 1915 it was adopted as a deliberately uninformative code name for the armored military vehicle under development.

From Portuguese tanque (“tank, liquid container”), from an Indo-Aryan language, likely 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.

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External links

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