Etymology: Old English tunne , weak feminine, Middle English tunne , later tonne ; cognate with Old Frisian tunne , tonne , Old Low German *tunna (Middle Low German, Low German tunne (tünne )), Middle Dutch tonne (Dutch ton ), Old High German tunna (Middle High German tunne , German tonne ); late Old Norse tunna (Swedish tunna , modern Norwegian tunna , tynna , Middle Dutch tunde , Danish tønde ); also medieval Latin tunna (9th cent. in Cassel Gloss.), Old French tonne , Provençal tona (in other Roman languages only in derivative forms: see tonnel n., tunnel n.); also Middle Irish, Irish and Gaelic tunna. Origin uncertain; apparently not originally Latin or Romanic. As the Old High German retains initial t it must have been adopted (from Low German or medieval Latin) after the High German sound shifting, i.e. after 700. Some suggest a Celtic source, viz. Old Irish toun hide, skin, so that the original sense would be ‘wine-skin’; but the Middle Irish tunna looks like an adopted word. At present it can only be said that the word appears to be as old or older in the Low German group of languages, including Old English, than anywhere else; its occurrence in the Corpus Gloss. c725 is apparently the earliest trace of the word in any language. The later Middle English spelling tonne was perhaps after French, but probably largely due to the scribal fashion of writing o for u , in contiguity to m , n , v , etc., as in son , tongue , honey , come , some , above , love etc. From c1688 the two forms tun and ton have been differentiated in use: see ton n.¹

Etymology: Malay.

Etymology: < tun n.¹