tank
Americannoun
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a large receptacle, container, or structure for holding a liquid or gas.
tanks for storing oil.
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a natural or artificial pool, pond, or lake.
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Military. an armored, self-propelled combat vehicle, armed with cannon and machine guns and moving on a caterpillar tread.
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(in a video game) a category of job classes in a role-playing game, best suited to withstand large amounts of damage from an enemy.
The only decent tank in this game is Warrior, just because the cooldown period for the Paladin and Dark Knight skills is way too long.
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Slang. a prison cell or enclosure for more than one occupant, as for prisoners awaiting a hearing.
verb (used with object)
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to put or store in a tank.
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(in a video game) to provoke and hold the attention of (an enemy character) so that it does not target other player characters in the party who are less able to withstand large amounts of damage.
If you’re properly tanking this boss, you’ll never let him face your mages.
verb (used without object)
verb phrase
idioms
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go in / into the tank, to go through the motions of a match but deliberately lose because of an illicit prearrangement or fix; throw a fight.
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in the tank,
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failing, doing poorly, or declining.
His grades were in the tank last quarter.
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favoring, colluding, or assisting in a partisan way (often followed by with orfor ).
The talk-show host was in the tank with the Green Party.
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noun
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a large container or reservoir for the storage of liquids or gases
tanks for storing oil
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an armoured combat vehicle moving on tracks and armed with guns, etc, originally developed in World War I
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( as modifier )
a tank commander
a tank brigade
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dialect a reservoir, lake, or pond
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photog
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a light-tight container inside which a film can be processed in daylight, the solutions and rinsing waters being poured in and out without light entering
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any large dish or container used for processing a number of strips or sheets of film
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slang
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a jail
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a jail cell
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Also called: tankful. the quantity contained in a tank
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a dam formed by excavation
verb
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(tr) to put or keep in a tank
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(intr) to move like a tank, esp heavily and rapidly
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slang to defeat heavily
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informal (intr) to fail, esp commercially
Other Word Forms
- tankless adjective
- tanklike adjective
Etymology
Origin of tank
First recorded in 1610–20; perhaps jointly from Gujarati tānkh “reservoir, lake,” and Portuguese tanque, shortening of estanque “pond,” literally, “something dammed up,” derivative of estancar, from Vulgar Latin stanticāre (unattested) “to dam up, weaken”; adopted as a cover name for the military vehicle during the early stages of its manufacture in England (December 1915)
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
During the removal process, she wore a face mask connected to a rolling cart of the laughing gas and oxygen tanks.
Silver’s comments—and a subsequent conference call addressing the topic with all 30 of the league’s general managers—came on the heels of some of the most laughable instances of tanking in NBA history.
“One of the challenges is you can deplete these really quickly,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank who used to teach at the Air Command and Staff College.
But German defense stocks—dominated by the tank maker Rheinmetall—more than tripled in the first nine months of last year, before easing a little.
When stocks tanked, Treasury prices have been following suit.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
