tunnel

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Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈtʌn(ə)l/

Noun

tunnel (plural tunnels)

1. An underground or underwater passage.
2. A passage through or under some obstacle.
   • 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

     But very soon he grew to like it, for the Boy used to talk to him, and made nice tunnels for him under the bedclothes that he said were like the burrows the real rabbits lived in.

3. A hole in the ground made by an animal, a burrow.
4. (computing, networking) A wrapper for a protocol that cannot otherwise be used because it is unsupported, blocked, or insecure.
5. A vessel with a broad mouth at one end, a pipe or tube at the other, for conveying liquor, fluids, etc., into casks, bottles, or other vessels; a funnel.
6. The opening of a chimney for the passage of smoke; a flue.

   • And one great chimney, whose long tunnel thence / The smoke forth threw.

7. (mining) A level passage driven across the measures, or at right angles to veins which it is desired to reach; distinguished from the drift, or gangway, which is led along the vein when reached by the tunnel.

Translations

• French: tunnel
• German: Tunnel, Stollen
• Italian: tunnel, traforo
• Portuguese: túnel
• Russian: тонне́ль
• Spanish: túnel

Verb

tunnel (tunnels, present participle tunnelling; past and past participle tunnelled)

1. (transitive) To make a tunnel through or under something; to burrow.
2. (intransitive) To dig a tunnel.
3. (computing, networking) To transmit something through a tunnel (wrapper for insecure or unsupported protocol).
4. (transitive, medicine) To insert a catheter into a vein to allow long-term use.
5. (physics) To undergo the quantum-mechanical phenomenon where a particle penetrates through a barrier that it classically cannot surmount.

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