Tunny comes from Middle French thon and directly from Latin thunnus ('tunny, tuna'), from Ancient Greek thynnos ('tunny fish'), possibly of Semitic origin. The historical chain includes Latin thunnus and Ancient Greek thynnos. The quoted older senses, "tunny, tuna" and "tunny fish", supply the semantic anchors for tunny. The formation is best read as borrowed: the word tunny carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a tuna, especially a large food and game fish of the genus Thunnus". Related English forms include tuna. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.