Emily Dickinson Lexicon

TUN, n. [Sax. tunna, Sw. tunna, a cask; Fr. tonne, tonneau; Ir. tonna; Arm. tonnell; Sp. and Port. tonel, tonelada; G. tonne; D. ton; W. tynell, a barrel or tun. This word seems to be from the root of L. teneo, to hold, Gr. τεινω, to stretch, W. tyn, stretched, strained, tight, tynâu, to strain, to tighten; and this seems also to be the Sax. tun, a town, for this word signifies also a garden, evidently from inclosing, and a class, from collecting or holding.]

1. In a general sense, a large cask; an oblong vessel bulging in the middle, like a pipe or puncheon, and girt with hoops.
2. A certain measure for liquids, as for wine, oil, &c.
3. A quantity of wine, consisting of two pipes or four hogsheads, or 252 gallons. In different countries, the tun differ in quantity.
4. 1n commerce, the weight of twenty hundreds gross, each hundred consisting of 112lb. = 2240lb. But by a law of Connecticut, passed June, 1827, gross weight is abolished and a tun is the weight of 2000lb. It is also a practice it New York to sell by 2000lb. to the tun.
5. A certain weight by which the burden of a ship is estimated; as, a ship of three hundred tuns, that is, a ship that will carry three hundred times two thousand weight. Forty-two cubic feet are allowed to a tun.
6. A certain quantity of timber, consisting of forty solid feet if round, or fifty-four feet, if square. Cyc.
7. Proverbially, a large quantity. Shak.
8. In burlesque, a drunkard. Dryden.
9. At the end of names, tun, ton, or don, signifies town, village, or hill.