Tunnel

How to spell tunnel

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tunnel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tunnel mean?

1. nounAn underground or enclosed passage dug through earth, rock, or another barrier.
2. verbTo dig or force a way through something, creating an enclosed passage.

Tunnel in a sentence

• noun

  The train slowed as it entered the long tunnel beneath the river.

• verb

  The escaped prisoners tried to tunnel under the perimeter wall.

• noun

  Engineers spent three years boring the tunnel through the mountain.

• verb

  Moles will tunnel through soft soil in search of worms.

Where does tunnel come from?

Language of origin: French

Tunnel travels into English from the Old French word tonnel, a diminutive of tonne meaning a cask or large barrel, which in turn referred to anything shaped like a hollow tube. When the word arrived in English in the fifteenth century it first named a funnel-shaped net used to trap birds, then a flue or pipe that carried smoke, and only later settled on the modern sense of an underground passage dug through earth or rock. The thread running through every stage is the idea of a hollow tubular shape, which is exactly what a cask, a flue, and a railway tunnel all share. The same French tonne also gave English the words tun (a large barrel) and the everyday funnel. The double n at the heart of the spelling is the part adults most often drop, and it survives from that original tonne root.

How the word is built

• tunn- (from French tonne: cask, tube)
• -el (diminutive suffix)