tunnel
Americannoun
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tunnels
plural
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an underground passage.
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a passageway, as for trains or automobiles, through or under an obstruction, as a city, mountain, river, harbor, or the like.
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an approximately horizontal gallery or corridor in a mine.
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the burrow of an animal.
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Dialect. a funnel.
verb (used with object)
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tunnels,
present (3rd person singular)
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tunneled,
past participle, past
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tunnelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
tunneling,
present participle
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tunnelling
present participle (especially British)
-
to construct a passageway through or under.
to tunnel a mountain.
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to make or excavate (a tunnel or underground passage).
to tunnel a passage under a river.
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to move or proceed by or as if by boring a tunnel.
The river tunneled its way through the mountain.
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to pierce or hollow out, as with tunnels.
verb (used without object)
-
tunnels,
present (3rd person singular)
-
tunneled,
past participle, past
-
tunnelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
tunneling,
present participle
-
tunnelling
present participle (especially British)
noun
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an underground passageway, esp one for trains or cars that passes under a mountain, river, or a congested urban area
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any passage or channel through or under something
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a dialect word for funnel
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obsolete the flue of a chimney
verb
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(tr) to make or force (a way) through or under (something)
to tunnel a hole in the wall
to tunnel the cliff
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(intr; foll by through, under, etc) to make or force a way (through or under something)
he tunnelled through the bracken
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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subtunnelnoun
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tunnelernoun
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tunnellernoun
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tunnellikeadjective
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untunneledadjective
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untunnelledadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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tunnelsimple
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tunnelssimple
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have tunneledperfect
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have tunnelledperfect
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has tunneledperfect
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has tunnelledperfect
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am tunnelingprogressive
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am tunnellingprogressive
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are tunnelingprogressive
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are tunnellingprogressive
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is tunnelingprogressive
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is tunnellingprogressive
-
have been tunnelingperfect progressive
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have been tunnellingperfect progressive
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has been tunnelingperfect progressive
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has been tunnellingperfect progressive
Past
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tunneledsimple
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tunnelledsimple
-
had tunneledperfect
-
had tunnelledperfect
-
was tunnelingprogressive
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was tunnellingprogressive
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were tunnelingprogressive
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were tunnellingprogressive
-
had been tunnelingperfect progressive
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had been tunnellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of tunnel
1400–50; late Middle English tonel (noun) < Middle French tonele, tonnelle funnel-shaped net, feminine of tonnel cask, diminutive of tonne tun; see -elle
Explanation
A tunnel is a passage that runs underground or through something, like a train tunnel that cuts through a mountain. Some theme parks have networks of underground tunnels so that employees can move around out of sight of visitors. Some tunnels, like New York's Lincoln Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel, which connect New York City to New Jersey, are large and solid enough to drive cars through. Others are much smaller, like the tunnels small animals dig through snow or soil for safety and shelter. As a verb, tunnel means "dig a tunnel" or "force through," the way your neighborhood groundhog tunnels under your dad's vegetable garden.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On television pictures, a voice can be heard saying "he spat on me" as the players made their way down the tunnel at TSC Arena.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
In tunnel field tests, strawberries protected by Plant Armor produced yields as much as 3.56 times higher than uncovered plants.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 1, 2026
Pulled alive 10 days after catastrophic floods trapped him in a tunnel, Nepali hydropower worker Kabir Maharjan is determined to help rebuild his country despite his own harrowing ordeal.
From Barron's ● Sep. 26, 2026
The piece not only drew on the color orange but was also influenced by a collapsible play tunnel she received as a gift after giving birth to her first child.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
Cocoa growls in my backpack, filling the tunnel with smoke.
From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas
Since it began surveys in May, the CRT has installed 39 footprint tunnels along hedgerows and woodland edges, with nine of the tunnels recording dormouse footprints.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
Three people were rescued from deep inside tunnels days after the disaster, but there has been no confirmation of further survivors since a Chinese man was pulled out alive nearly a week ago.
From Barron's ● Sep. 11, 2026
Coming from Victorville, he wasn’t used to areas with no light and didn’t understand how it could travel through different tunnels down the street, reflecting so spectacularly off high-rise buildings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
“They said at the time, ‘we are going to put everything in tunnels, inside a mountain,’” Mr. Grossi said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
“Them little holes are tunnels that lead all over MidPass, and even beyond. Somebody once said a few of ’em go clear over to the mainland.
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
His best work tunneled into life’s darkest spaces to excavate ideas about our fears and obsessions, often reflected through dazzling practical effects that matched the naturalism of his greatest feature: a singularly expressive, malleable face.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026
Separated from his regiment in the fighting, Thomas was captured by the enemy but has tunneled his way out of prison.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2025
In 2021, using lidar technology, Estrada-Belli found evidence that looters had tunneled inside a seemingly royal pyramid within the city’s monumental core.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 26, 2024
Voilà, your water wave has tunneled through a wall!
From Scientific American ● Oct. 12, 2023
He tunneled through the watery darkness, and then the rock above them vanished.
From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack
According to the report, the six were cell mates and tunnelled out of Gilboa prison in northern Israel, where security forces launched a search.
From Reuters ● Sep. 6, 2021
Her other children have tunnelled under their home, building a safe zone.
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2021
Yet the magazine’s final moment of thumb-in-the-eye relevance—this May, when Donald Trump compared Pete Buttigieg to Alfred E. Neuman—emphasized just how deeply Mad has tunnelled its way into the culture, waiting to inspire anew.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 25, 2019
We tunnelled them out and ringed the tunnels with snow-forts.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 14, 2018
Here Odysseus tunnelled, and raked together with his hands a wide bed—for a fall of leaves was there, enough to save two men or maybe three on a winter night, a night of bitter cold.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
His tunneling firm, The Boring Company, moved to Bastrop in 2021.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
Elon Musk continues to draw investment dollars — this time for a tunneling company that just raised $3 billion so it can help “solve traffic” via expensive underground tunnels.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
With highly sensitive tunneling spectroscopy measurements, the researchers found that NbSe2 does not behave like a straightforward superconductor governed by only one superconducting order.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 31, 2026
They also provide advanced privacy features, including kill switches, ad and tracker blockers and split tunneling.
From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026
She was already running, tunneling through the crowd, bouncing off grown-ups’ legs, her mother after her, “Excuse me...excuse me...”
From "Wringer" by Jerry Spinelli
"Up ahead, even now, we might run into water which would drown the people tunnelling," said Dix.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
McGoran also says that technologies such as laser-guidance systems and gyroscopes, which help machines work out their position relative to the world around them, have made tunnelling more accurate in recent years.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
If tunnelling releases it into a confined space and it comes into contact with a spark or another ignition source, it can ignite or explode, a government official said.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
Professor Clarke and his team looked at how these particles appeared to break rules like travelling through energy barriers that conventional physics said was impossible - something called "tunnelling".
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2025
Soft, soft, but how piercing! boring and drilling into reason, tunnelling through resolution.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
