tin
/tɪn
/- Some of it they gamble on the price of tin, or the dollar going down, or whether there'll be floods in Asia.
- It had blamed the illegal miners for causing a drop in the international price of tin.
- I like the leg room, and I demand a car made of steel, not tin.
- Instead most graves are marked with a steel stake and a piece of rusting tin bearing a number.
- I didn't really have the proper tin to do it in, so made it in a long flat baking dish and it came out more like a Quorn sausage sponge cake, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Tin is quite a rare element, occurring chiefly in the mineral cassiterite. Pure crystalline tin exists in two allotropic modifications, the metallic form (white tin), and a semimetallic form (grey tin). It is used in various alloys, notably bronze, and for electroplating iron or steel sheets to make tinplate.
- You never see them scurrying to school, as we did, with baskets and biscuit tins containing ingredients.
- There were bags of flour on the floor, lumps of doughs on chairs, bottles of fruit and nuts in boxes, and towers of biscuit tins and cookie-making things in doorways.
- The base of his motor was a tea chest, a biscuit tin housed the projection lamp, scanning discs were cut from cardboard, and he also utilised four-penny cycle lenses.
- Not only did the first division leaders pick him up on a free, but rather than superstar wages he's happy with a bowl of milk and a tin of cat food.
- Not only was the room in a filthy state, the food cupboard contained just a tin of mushy peas, baked beans and corned beef.
- I can empty a tin of cat food into a bowl, give a dog a bone, but never, ever, have I let any sort of animal eat out of my hand.
- If I eat any more tins of tuna fish, I'm going to turn into a dolphin.
- I used to live on tins of beans and ravioli that I would heat up in my room.
- Then the meat went in and cooked for a long while, followed by a couple of tins of kidney beans.
- Grease the tin and line with baking parchment, then arrange the quince quarters over the base.
- Spoon into lightly greased muffin tins and bake at 200 degrees C for about 12-15 minutes.
- Grease a loaf tin with plenty of butter and press the mixture in.
- She began the third game by tinning another of the backhand drop shots that her heretofore served her so well, and just like that Kitchen seized that small opening and wedged it much wider by racing off with five quick points.
- I tinned some small speaker wires, but found that soldering and splicing wires is questionable depending on the size of the wire.
- These alloys can be tinned although some compositions are more suitable than others.
Phrases
do (exactly) what it says on the tin
have a tin ear
put the tin lid on
Origin
Old English, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch tin and German Zinn.
The metal tin appears in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great. Use of tin to mean a sealed metal container for food or drink dates from the late 18th century. Tin is not a precious metal, and a number of phrases refer to its relative lack of value. To have a tin ear is to be tone-deaf. The term a little tin god for someone regarded with unjustified respect conjures up the idea of an idol made of cheap tin instead of gold or silver. In the early 20th century a tin Lizzie was an affectionate nickname for a car, especially one of the early Ford models. Since the late 1980s the wood preservative manufacturer Ronseal has seen its slogan It does exactly what it says on the tin become a catch-all phrase for anything which unpretentiously does what it claims to.