use-icon

HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.

guide to the dictionary

use-icon

THE USAGE PANEL

The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.

The Panelists

open-icon

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP

The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.

scroll-icon

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG

The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.

100-words-icon

See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series!

Find out more!

open-icon

INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?

Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com

tank (tăngk)
Share:
n.
1.
a. A large, often metallic container for holding or storing liquids or gases.
b. The amount that this container can hold: buy a tank of gas.
2. A usually artificial pool, pond, reservoir, or cistern, especially one used to hold water for drinking or for irrigation.
3. A usually glass-walled container in which live fish, reptiles, or other animals are kept.
4. An enclosed, heavily armored combat vehicle that is armed with cannon and machine guns and moves on continuous tracks.
5. A tank top.
6. Slang A jail or jail cell.
v. tanked, tank·ing, tanks
v.tr.
To place, store, or process in a tank.
v.intr.
Informal To suffer a sudden decline or failure: The stock market tanked yesterday.
Phrasal Verb:
tank up
1. Slang To drink to the point of intoxication.
2. To fill the tank of a motor vehicle with gasoline.
Idiom:
in the tank
1. In reserve: a runner who didn't have enough in the tank to hold the lead.
2. In a state of decline or failure: Stocks have been in the tank for months.
3. Enthusiastically partial; strongly favoring: a reporter accused of being in the tank for a candidate.

[Partly from an Indic source such as Gujarati ākhī, cistern, and ākhī,, reservoir, or Marathi āke, cistern, reservoir (all from Prakrit aka, ditch, reservoir, of unknown origin) and partly from Portuguese tanque, reservoir (variant of estanque, from estancar, to dam up, from Vulgar Latin *stanticāre; see STANCH1). Noun, sense 4, from the fact that in WWI the British army tried to conceal the development and transport of such armored vehicles by referring to them as water tanks in documents and communications.]

tankful (-fl) n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.