Forms: see prec. sb. [f. prec.]
1. trans. To put into or store in a tun or tuns. Often with up, more rarely in; also absol.
α. c. 1430. Pilgr. Lyf Manhode, III. xliii. (1869), 158. Þe fonelle … aualeth and tunneth þe wyn.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 506/1. Tunnon, or put drynke or other thynge yn a tunne.
a. 1533. Ld. Berners, Gold. Bk. M. Aurel. (1546), C c ij. Whan the newe wine is tunned.
1638. MS. Min. Archdeaconry of Essex, lf. 18 b. He did brew on a Satterday and tunne vpon the Sunday morneing.
1696. Phil. Trans., XIX. 274. When they [Figs] were pulled off and Tunned up, to be sent beyond Seas.
1766. Entick, London (1776), I. 410. Merchandize…, to be packed, tunned, piped, barrelled.
1843. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., IV. II. 489. To carry and tun the cider.
β. 1426. Lydg., De Guil. Pilgr., 12987. Thys phone! Wyth wych my wynes I vp tonne.
1477. J. Paston, in P. Lett., III. 175. I shall do tonnen in to your place a doseyn ale.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Entonner, to tonne wine, or poure it into tonnes.
b. fig. To put or store as in a cask; spec. to drink to excess, to swill oneself with. Also absol.
α. 1589. Nashe, Anat. Absurd., 20. These Bussards thinke knowledge a burthen, tapping it before they haue halfe tunde it.
1595. R. Hasleton, Strange & Wonderf. Things, in Arb., Garner, VIII. 384. Pouring water through a cane which was in my mouth … until they had tunned in such quantity as was not tolerable.
1628. Feltham, Resolves, II. [I.] lxxxiv. 241. Whose delights are only to tunne in.
1761. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, III. xx. They [brain-cells] might continue to be injected and tunn’d into.
1841. Fraser’s Mag., XXV. 514. He used to tun down beer … during dinner.
β. 1597–8. Bp. Hall, Sat., V. ii. 101. The swolne bezell … That tonnes in gallons to his bursten panch.
c. (See quot.)
1781. P. Beckford, Hunting (1802), 337. Poachers … catch the young foxes in trenches dug at the mouth of the hole, which I believe they call tunning them.
2. To fill as, or like, a tun or cask. ? Obs.
1635. Quarles, Embl., II. x. 6. A Cask, that seems as full, as faire; But meerely tunn’d with Ayre.
1664. Cotton, Scarron., I. 104. Tunning themselves with Ale, and Beer.
3. app. intr. Of young rabbits: To become corpulent or ‘pot-bellied.’
1741. Compl. Fam.-Piece, III. 510. Ground Malt helps to recover the young ones when tunned. [Cf. TUNNING 2.]
Hence Tunned ppl. a.
1671. Grew, Anat. Plants, i. § 32. The said Aperture being that … to the Sap, which … the Bung-hole of the Barrel, is to the new tunn’d Liquor.
