Tonkin

Also Tong·king

[ton-kin, tong-]

noun

1. a former state in northern French Indochina, now part of Vietnam.

2. Gulf of Tonkin, an arm of the South China Sea, west of Hainan. 300 miles (485 km) long.

Tonkin

/ ˈtɒŋˈkɪŋ, ˈtɒnˈkɪn /

noun

1. a former state of N French Indochina (1883–1946), on the Gulf of Tonkin: forms the largest part of N Vietnam

2. an arm of the South China Sea, bordered by N Vietnam, the Leizhou Peninsula of SW China, and Hainan Island. Length: about 500 km (300 miles)

Example Sentences

The paucity of hard evidence about the end of Marlowe’s life requires the author to engage in speculation about the murder and more, but our reviewer, Boyd Tonkin, observed that “no one can speculate with greater authority than Mr. Greenblatt.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

To do so, they used two isolated incidents of North Vietnamese patrol boats attacking a naval destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Read more on Salon

They manipulated intelligence that was just as thin as the Gulf of Tonkin incident to fashion a pretext for war, and after a lengthy, vociferous debate, the administration managed to get Congress to authorize the use of force.

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It reminded me of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s manufactured Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 that Congress passed, enabling him to vastly escalate U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

"We were on tenterhooks in the sale room, it just kept going and going, it was wonderful, truly wonderful," said Jennifer Tonkin of auctioneers Bonhams.

Read more on BBC