tent
Pluraltents
Pluraltents
- 1A portable shelter of canvas or other strong cloth stretched over poles, used to protect people from the weather.
The scouts pitched their tents in a clearing before nightfall.
A sudden gust flattened the tent we had staked at the summit.
Note
The name records a stretched thing. Middle English tente came through Old French from Latin tendere, "to stretch, extend": cloth pulled taut over poles. Three unrelated words share the spelling, one meaning attention, one a surgical probe, one a Spanish wine, and only context tells them apart. A tent is pitched or put up, then taken down and packed away.
- 2To go camping, typically sleeping outdoors in a tent.
Each August they tent along the rugged coast for a week.
We prefer to tent rather than rent a cabin.
Similarcamp
- 3
- 4To drape aluminum foil in an inverted V shape over food, reducing splatter before placing it in the oven.
Tent the chicken loosely with foil to keep grease off the oven walls.
He tented the casserole so the top wouldn't burn before the inside cooked.
Similarcover
Note
A kitchen instruction rather than a camping one. The food is the object and the foil goes in a with-phrase: tent the roast with foil. The foil stands in a peak, propped rather than wrapped. That difference separates tenting a dish from covering or sealing it, and it explains why splatter is kept off without the food being closed in.
- 5
- 6To fumigate a building or space, treating it with toxic fumes to destroy pests.
The company will tent the property next week to eliminate the infestation.
Crews tent infested homes and pump in gas for several days.
Similarfumigate
- 7A roll of lint or linen, or a piece of sponge or other absorbent material, used to dilate a body canal, hold a wound open, or absorb discharge.
The nurse changed the tent packed into the abscess each morning.
Surgeons once used a tent of dried sponge to widen the passage gradually.
Note
A surgeon's word with its own origin: it came through Middle French from Latin tentare, "to probe, test." This tent is packing that stays in place. It is a roll of lint or a plug of sponge set into a wound or canal to hold it open or widen it, or to soak up discharge.
- 8A slender probe used to explore or search a wound.
The surgeon passed a tent gently along the wound channel.
With a fine tent the doctor located the lodged splinter.
Similarprobe
Note
Closer to the Latin root than the absorbent packing: tentare meant "to probe," and here the instrument does exactly that. When older medical writing mentions a tent, the surrounding verb usually shows which is meant. A probe is passed along a wound to search it, while packing is set in and left there.
- 9To probe or explore a wound using a tent, or to hold a wound open with one.
Surgeons tent the deep gash to check for splinters.
They tent the opening daily so it heals from the bottom up.
Note
The verb behind both instruments: to tent a wound is to probe it, or to keep it open with packing. Shakespeare turned it on a person in Hamlet: "I'll tent him to the quick," meaning to probe him down to the raw, tender flesh. The figurative use keeps that clinical sharpness, since to tent someone is to test them where it hurts.
- 10A portable pulpit set up outdoors to serve worshippers who cannot fit inside the church.
The congregation overflowed into the field, so the elders raised a tent for the sermon.
From the tent the preacher could be heard across the whole gathering.
Note
A Scottish word for the preaching station raised in the open air when a congregation outgrew its church. James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) shows the scene: a splendid tent erected on the brae north of the town, "and round that the countless congregation assembled." The tent is the pulpit, not a shelter for the crowd, who gather round it.
- 11A representation of a tent borne as a heraldic charge on a shield or coat of arms.
The herald blazoned a white tent on the blue field of the shield.
An ancestral tent appears as the central charge on the family arms.
Note
A heraldic use, now archaic. In heraldry a "bearing" is a device displayed on a shield, and the tent can serve as one, just as a lion or a tower might. The usage belongs to older descriptions of coats of arms. In modern prose it needs a word of context, such as "a tent on the shield," before readers will see the emblem rather than the shelter.
- 12Intention or purpose; the aim or design behind an action.
Their tent was honest, whatever the outcome of the venture.
He pursued his tent with quiet determination through every setback.
Note
Intention rather than attention, and the overlap is old: the Old French atente behind this family meant both. Cursor Mundi, written before 1300, has a figure go into the field and seek Abel "wit al his tent," with all his intent, all his purpose. The sense is archaic, so a modern reader meets it in verse and older narrative rather than in speech.
- 13A deep red wine, made chiefly in Galicia or Malaga in Spain.
She preferred a glass of tent with her evening meal.
Casks of Spanish tent arrived at the harbor each autumn.
Note
Another word entirely, from Spanish tinto, "deep-colored," and ultimately Latin tinctus, "dyed." That origin makes it a doublet of tint. The wine is named for its color, as claret is. It is also called tent wine or tinta, and it is now archaic. In modern prose, tent wine is the clearer choice, since it cannot be mistaken for the shelter.
- 14Attention, regard, or care given to something or someone.
Take tent of the steep path after dark.
Lo ! lo ! my frend , take tent to this womman
a. 1451, John Lydgate, The Prohemy of a Marriage betwixt and Olde Man and a Yonge WifeNote
The noun appears in the phrase take tent, "pay heed." John Lydgate, writing before 1451, has "take tent to this womman," with to marking what deserves attention. Like the verb "to heed", it is archaic outside Scottish and British dialect. In modern writing it reads as deliberately old or regional, so it suits dialogue or period voice rather than plain prose.
- 15To attend to something; to give it heed or notice.
Note
A different word altogether. Here the spelling is attent, "attention," with its first syllable worn away, just as tend came from attend. It is archaic, surviving in Scottish and other British dialect. In the fourteenth-century Romance of Syr Tryamoure, women are given her "to tent hur," to look after her. The verb takes a direct object: you tent a person or a task.
- 16To guard or protect; to hinder or block.
Guards tent the bridge so none may cross at night.
Thick brush will tent the way through the glen.
Note
Guarding and hindering meet in one verb because both mean standing over a thing: you keep watch on it, and you keep others from it. Like the verb meaning "to heed", it is archaic outside Scottish and British dialect. In either meaning it takes a direct object: guards tent a bridge, and thick brush tents a path.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English tente, borrowed from Old French tente, from Vulgar Latin *tenta, from the feminine of Latin tentus, the past participle of tendere ("to stretch, extend"). It displaced the native Old English word teld ("tent").
From Middle English tent ("attention"), a shortened variation of attent ("attention"), from Old French atente, from Latin attenta, the feminine of attentus, the past participle of attendere ("to attend").
From Middle English tente ("a probe"), from Middle French tente, formed from the verb tenter, from Latin tentāre ("to probe, test"), an alteration of temptāre ("to test, probe, tempt").
From Spanish tinto ("deep-colored"), from Latin tīnctus, the past participle of tingo ("to dye"). It is a doublet of tint and tinto.