tunny
Americannoun
-
tunny,
plural
-
tunnies
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of tunny
1520–30; by apocope < Medieval Latin tunnīna false tunny, noun use of feminine of tunnīnus like a tunny, equivalent to tunn ( us ) tunny (variant of Latin thynnus < Greek thýnnos ) + -īnus -ine 1
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:
In the interwar period, Scarborough and Whitby became world-famous destinations for game fishing because of the size of the tuna - nicknamed "tunny".
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
Said he: "It should have been tunny fish, which we were out to get this morning, but we caught 15 codfish instead."
From Time Magazine Archive
Merchant ships plied to and fro on the blue oceans, and fishermen hauled in brimming nets of cod and tunny, bass and mullet; the forests ran with game, and no children went hungry.
From "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman
And Strattis, in his Atalanta, says— Next buy the entrails of a tunny, and Some pettitoes of pigs, to cost a drachma.
From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us
But the melandrys is the largest description of tunny, as Pamphilus explains in his treatise on Names; and that when preserved is very rich and oily.
From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us
The sea was again full of small tunnies.
From The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 by Julius E. Olson
The report runs that in some places, when the edict was published, the Christians did not wait for a summons, but swept up to the temples to sacrifice, like a shoal of tunnies.
From Callista : a Tale of the Third Century by John Henry Newman
Sebastian Cabot himself named these lands Baccalaos, because he found in the seas thereabout such multitudes of certain large fishes like tunnies, called baccalaos by the natives, that they sometimes stayed his ships.
On the same evening, many large birds were seen, and flocks of small birds, all coming from the northward, and many tunnies were seen.
The tunnies there Have gain'd the height of fame and palm of victory.
From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us
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.
