Dictionary » T » Tub




Origin: Tubbed; Tubbing.

1. An open wooden vessel formed with staves, bottom, and hoops; a kind of short cask, half barrel, or firkin, usually with but one head, used for various purposes.

2. The amount which a tub contains, as a measure of quantity; as, a tub of butter; a tub of camphor, which is about 1 cwt, etc.

3. Any structure shaped like a tub: as, a certain old form of pulpit; a short, broad boat, etc, often used jocosely or opprobriously. All being took up and busied, some in pulpits and some in tubs, in the grand work of preaching and holding forth. (south)

4. A sweating in a tub; a tub fast.

5. A small cask; as, a tub of gin.

6. A box or bucket in which coal or ore is sent up a shaft; so called by miners. Tub fast, an old mode of treatment for the venereal disease, by sweating in a close place, or tub, and fasting. Tub wheel, a horizontal water wheel, usually in the form of a short cylinder, to the circumference of which spiral vanes or floats, placed radially, are attached, turned by the impact of one or more streams of water, conducted so as to strike against the floats in the direction of a tangent to the cylinder.

Origin: OE. Tubbe; of Dutch or Low German origin; cf. LG. Tubbe, D. Tobbe.


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