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tank up

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Tank Up
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tank

  [tangk]
Use tank up in a Sentence
–noun
1. a large receptacle, container, or structure for holding a liquid or gas: tanks for storing oil.
2. a natural or artificial pool, pond, or lake.
3. Military. an armored, self-propelled combat vehicle, armed with cannon and machine guns and moving on a caterpillar tread.
4. Slang. a prison cell or enclosure for more than one occupant, as for prisoners awaiting a hearing.
5. tank top.
–verb (used with object)
6. to put or store in a tank.
–verb (used without object)
7. Slang. to do poorly or decline rapidly; fail: The movie tanked at the box office.
—Verb phrase
8. tank up,
a. to fill the gas tank of an automobile or other motor vehicle.
b. Slang. to drink a great quantity of alcoholic beverage, esp. to intoxication.
—Idiom
9. go in the tank, Boxing Slang. to go through the motions of a match but deliberately lose because of an illicit prearrangement or fix; throw a fight.
Origin:
1610–20; perh. jointly < Gujarati tānkh reservoir, lake, and Pg tanque, contr. of estanque pond, lit., something dammed up, deriv. of estancar (< VL *stanticāre) to dam up, weaken; adopted as a cover name for the military vehicle during the early stages of its manufacture in England (December, 1915)

Related forms:
tankless, adjective
tanklike, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Tank Up
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tank   (tāngk)   
n.  

    1. A large, often metallic container for holding or storing liquids or gases.

    2. The amount that this container can hold: buy a tank of gas.

  2. A usually artificial pool, pond, reservoir, or cistern, especially one used to hold water for drinking or for irrigation.

  3. An enclosed, heavily armored combat vehicle that is armed with cannon and machine guns and moves on continuous tracks.

  4. A tank top.

  5. Slang A jail or jail cell.

v.   tanked, tank·ing, tanks

v.   tr.
To place, store, or process in a tank.
v.   intr.
Slang To suffer a sudden decline or failure: "Steady investors . . . kept their heads when the stock market tanked in October 1987" (Burton G. Malkiel).
Phrasal Verb(s):
tank up

  1. Slang To drink to the point of intoxication.

  2. To fill the tank of a motor vehicle with gasoline.


[Partly from Gujarati tānkh, cistern (from Sanskrit taḍāgaḥ, pond, perhaps of Dravidian origin) and partly from Portuguese tanque, reservoir (variant of estanque, from estancar, to dam up, from Vulgar Latin *stanticāre; see stanch1).]
tank'ful' (-fŏŏl') n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Slang Dictionary
tank

  1. in.
    and tank up. to drink too much beer; to drink to excess. : Let's go out this Friday and tank a while.
  2. n.
    a drunkard. (Usually tank-up.) : You're turning into a real tank, Harry.
  3. n.
    a jail cell for holding drunks. : One night in the tank was enough to make John take the pledge.
  4. tv. & in.
    to lose a game deliberately. : The manager got wind of a plan to tank Friday's game.
  5. in.
    for something to fail. : The entire stock market tanked on Friday.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Word Origin & History

tank  (v.)
"to lose or fail," 1976, originaly in tennis jargon, but said there to be from boxing, from tank (n.) in some sense. Tanked "drunk" is from 1893.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Idioms & Phrases

tank up

  1. Fill a gas tank with fuel, as in As soon as we tank up the car we can leave. [First half of 1900s]

  2. Drink to the point of intoxication. F. Scott Fitzgerald used this expression in The Great Gatsby (1926): "I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon." This expression often is put in the passive, meaning "be or become intoxicated," as in My roommate really got tanked up last night. [Slang; c. 1900]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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