Tank Meaning
/ˈtæŋk/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounA closed container for liquids or gases.
nounAn open container or pool for storing water or other liquids.
Sentence Examples
The tank has a capacity of fifty-gallons.
There's little water in the tank, if any.
The fish swam happily in the large glass tank.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The soldiers climbed into the armored ____ to protect themselves from enemy fire.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We filled the fish ____ with fresh water and added some beautiful colorful plants for our new gold fish to live in today.
Word Origin & History
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”). First attested in the 1610s. * In the sense of armoured vehicle, prototypes were described as tanks for carrying water to disguise their nature and due to physical resemblance. First attested in 1915, but in common usage only as of 1916. Displaced landship, and mostly displaced battlewagon.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The other room was a kitchen, with an open fireplace, a safe, a dresser and a tin sink, with a tap from the tank outside."
— 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 29:
"The tanks are full and the grass is high."
— 1896, Henry Lawson, Out Back:
"Tank beats everything! Oh, man! I could do this all day!"
— 2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: The Ark:
"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."
— 1985 April 13, Philip Brasfield, “Echoes Inside of What's Outside”, in Gay Community News, page 4:
"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."
— 1941 September, “The Why and the Wherefore: The Longest Tank Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, pages 431–432:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The soldiers climbed into the armored ____ to protect themselves from enemy fire.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We filled the fish ____ with fresh water and added some beautiful colorful plants for our new gold fish to live in today.