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
-
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.
-
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
-
has tunneledperfect
-
has tunnelledperfect
-
am tunnelingprogressive
-
am tunnellingprogressive
-
are tunnelingprogressive
-
are tunnellingprogressive
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is tunnelingprogressive
-
is tunnellingprogressive
-
have been tunnelingperfect progressive
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have been tunnellingperfect progressive
-
has been tunnelingperfect progressive
-
has been tunnellingperfect progressive
Past
-
tunneledsimple
-
tunnelledsimple
-
had tunneledperfect
-
had tunnelledperfect
-
was tunnelingprogressive
-
was tunnellingprogressive
-
were tunnelingprogressive
-
were tunnellingprogressive
-
had been tunnelingperfect progressive
-
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:
"We create, basically, a tornado – a violent vortex inside the tunnel," says Helming, as he explains how this helps the machine to suck away debris, which at times takes the form of lava.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Meron has been sleeping in a tent in a tunnel in central London for about two months.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Although the Channel tunnel is used only at about 50 percent capacity, previous rival bids for a new service on the line have hit hurdles including regulation and restricted station capacity.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
Their grandmother, Rae, escaped from a Jewish ghetto in what was then the Polish city of Novogrudok by clawing her way through a tunnel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
Now they did not know how long they had been in the tunnel.
From "Rowan of Rin" by Emily Rodda
Now, late in this hot August afternoon, dogs of every size race through underground tunnels and emerge from the other side even more manically happy than when they entered.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
Time trials demand sleek aerodynamics: Teams spend hours refining positions in wind tunnels to achieve maximum speed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 10, 2026
The roadmap, which has not yet been implemented, states: "A process shall begin to inventory and store heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots, and tunnels".
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026
The roadmap lays out a process to decommission and store Hamas's heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels, to be implemented by NCAG.
From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026
He wasn’t in Stockholm, though, to stalk the cobblestoned streets of Old Town, or walk through the underground tunnels, or ready himself for a cruise on the Baltic Sea.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
“At these depths, there would not be noise and vibration,” Sheridan said, noting that Metro had tunneled in similar soil conditions at similar depths without settlement problems.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 24, 2026
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
The incident occurred within the light-rail line’s most dangerous stretch, on MLK Way South, where trains are on the surface rather than being elevated or tunneled like other parts of the line.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 12, 2023
Then someone else appeared from the crowd, and Annabeth’s vision tunneled.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
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
The suspected mastermind of France’s “heist of the century” has gone on trial more than 40 years after robbers tunnelled through sewers to snatch the equivalent of €29m from a bank vault.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 12, 2018
During the construction of the dam, they tunnelled into the rock at the base of the slide and drilled hundreds of drainage holes upward into the plane of failure.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
The jeweller was working again, bent over his bench, the tube tunnelled into his face.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
Bringing the two together raises a fundamental question: what happens to familiar thermodynamic processes when quantum effects such as tunneling, entanglement, and superposition enter the picture?
From Science Daily ● Aug. 14, 2026
Elon Musk’s tunneling startup, the Boring Company, is in talks to raise new funding that would value it at around $20 billion, according to people familiar with the discussions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
The team also examined how neighboring edge states interact, finding that their energy levels shift because of a combination of electrostatic interactions and quantum tunneling.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 11, 2026
They also provide advanced privacy features, including kill switches, ad and tracker blockers and split tunneling.
From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026
And how could he be sure he was tunneling well under the riverbed?
From "Abel's Island" by William Steig
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
They are widely seen as a pest on agricultural land because their tunnelling can damage the root systems of crops and pasture and the molehills can cause damage to machinery.
From BBC ● Mar. 22, 2026
In the words of the committee, "the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit".
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2025
He thinks the success of the tunnelling so far bodes well for completing the tunnel to Euston.
From BBC ● Apr. 15, 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.
