tub

Pluraltubs

Formstubs, tubbing, tubbed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A bathtub; the fixture in a bathroom in which a person bathes.

   After the long hike, all she wanted was a hot soak in the tub.

   He scrubbed the tub until the porcelain gleamed.

   Similarbath, bathtub

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A flat-bottomed, open vessel, about as wide as it is tall or wider, used for storing or packing things, or for washing things in.

   Farmers packed the salted fish into wooden tubs for the winter.

   He soaked the stained work clothes overnight in a tub of soapy water.

   Similarvat, basin, barrel, bucket

   Note

   The core sense, the one the others borrow from. Middle English had tubbe, taken from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, and nothing is known of it before that. Despite the resemblance, the word is unrelated to tube. Its defining feature is shape, flat-bottomed and squat, and that shape is what the figurative senses keep reaching for, from a slow, wallowing ship to the slang insult.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The contents of a tub, or the amount that a tub can hold.

   The recipe calls for an entire tub of soft margarine.

   They went through three tubs of popcorn during the double feature.

   Similarcarton, pot, container

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A small cask; a little barrel for liquids such as beer, wine, or spirits.

   The smugglers rolled tubs of brandy up the beach by moonlight.

   Each tub of gin held about four gallons.

   Similarcask, keg, barrel

5. 5
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To bathe in a bathtub.

   He prefers to tub at night, with a book propped on the rim.

   After a long shift, she tubs in water as hot as she can stand.

   Similarbathe, bath, soak

   Note

   A verb formed straight from the bathtub noun, and it works in two ways: you can simply tub, or you can tub someone else, a child or a dog. The Spectator in 1873 still set it off in quotation marks, "Don't we all 'tub' in England?" That suggests the verb then felt new or playful rather than plain. Inflection follows the doubled-consonant pattern: tubbed, tubbing.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To plant, set, or store something in a tub.

   Gardeners tub tender shrubs in the fall and move them into the greenhouse.

   The dairy tubbed the fresh butter before shipping it to market.

   Similarpot, pack, store

7. 7
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A slow-moving boat or ship.

   The troopship was a rusty tub that wallowed in every swell.

   It took our tub almost a week to make the crossing the liner did in two days.

   Similarhulk, scow

   Note

   Sailors' talk, and never praise. A ship called a tub is being mocked for crawling along, typically because she is old, worn out or past her usefulness. The word is informal and judges speed and seaworthiness, not looks. That is the line between it and the jibe at squat structures, where the target is the broad shape itself.

8. 8
   nounslangcountable

   An overweight or obese person; a disparaging slang term.

   The tabloid cruelly branded the retired boxer a washed-up tub.

   I caught my reflection in the window and wondered when I'd become such a tub.

   Similarfatso, fatty, porker, blimp

   Note

   A blunt insult that transfers the container's squat, rounded profile to the human body. In Trey Ellis's Platitudes (2003) it sits beside zitface, which shows its level: juvenile and meant to wound. Because it is disparaging slang, it belongs in reported speech or self-mockery, never in neutral description. The literal tub of lard of the kitchen container is close enough to be heard behind it.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A box or bucket used to haul coal or ore up a mine shaft.

   A loaded tub jumped the rails halfway up the incline.

   Miners were paid by the number of tubs they filled each shift.

   Similarskip, bucket

   Note

   Below ground, the household vessel goes to work. In a mine the tub keeps the open, sturdy shape of the ordinary container but becomes a unit of haulage rather than storage. Tubs are filled, sent up and counted, and a loaded tub means coal or ore on its way to the surface.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    The bare body shell of a car, without doors, hood, trunk lid, or fenders, that is lowered onto the chassis during assembly or, in unibody designs, forms the vehicle's main structure.

    Restorers stripped the tub to bare metal before welding in new floor panels.

    In a unibody design, the tub itself carries the structural loads.

    Similarshell, bodyshell

    Note

    A word from the car factory and the racing world. The tub is what remains of a body once every bolt-on panel is gone. In high-performance cars it is often the whole structural core: Máté Petrány wrote in 2017 that every McLaren street or race car since 1981 had used a carbon fiber tub. That phrase names exactly this kind of monocoque.

11. 11
    nounderogatoryhumorouscountable

    Any structure resembling a tub in shape, such as an old boxed-in pulpit or a short, broad boat; used mockingly or humorously.

    The congregation watched the minister mount his paneled tub above the pews.

    He gamely rowed the regatta in a beamy little tub of his own making.

    Note

    Here the word is a jibe at shape. Robert South, in sermons published between 1692 and 1717, pictures preachers busy "some in pulpits and some in tubs." The contrast does the work: a pulpit is proper, while a tub is the boxed stand of a preacher not worth taking seriously. The same humor stretches to any short, broad boat. Used this way, the word teases rather than describes.

12. 12
    nouncountable

    Any of various fixed quantities of goods, such as butter or oysters, historically sold by the tub.

    The ledger recorded four tubs of butter received from the Hudson Valley dairy.

    Oystermen sold their catch by the tub straight from the boat.

    Note

    Not one measure but many. The quantity a tub stood for depended on what was being sold, so a tub of butter and a tub of oysters were separate trade units with nothing in common but the container. The sense belongs to the history of commerce, and it travels with the phrase by the tub.

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