Cans

How to spell cans

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cans

What does cans mean?

1. nounSealed metal containers used to hold food, drink, or other goods.
2. verbPreserves food by sealing it in airtight containers, as done by a third person.

Cans in a sentence

• noun

  The recycling bin was full of empty drink cans.

• verb

  Every autumn she cans tomatoes from the garden.

• noun

  He stacked the soup cans neatly on the pantry shelf.

• verb

  The small factory cans peaches for export.

Where does cans come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word can comes from the Old English canne, a word for a cup or drinking vessel, which has cousins across the Germanic languages such as the German Kanne and the Dutch kan, all meaning a jug or pot. The original sense was simply a container for liquid, and over the centuries it narrowed toward the sealed metal vessel we now picture when buying tinned food or fizzy drinks. The verb sense, meaning to preserve food by sealing it in such a container, grew directly out of the noun in the nineteenth century when commercial canning became widespread. Adding the plain -s ending gives either the plural of the container or the present-tense form used with he, she, or it. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, it carries none of the silent-letter or doubled-consonant traps that catch writers out in longer words.

How the word is built

• can (container/verb)
• -s (plural or third-person singular marker)