ton

Definitions

Agriculture

  • noun a unit of measurement of weight, equal to 1016 kg.

Construction

  • A measure of weight equal to 2,000 lbs. or 907.2 kg.
  • In cooling systems, a measurement of chiller size equal to 12,000 Btus of heat removal per hour.

Cricket

  • noun a batsman’s score of a hundred runs; a century
    Citation ‘In a relatively low-scoring match Glenn turner played the vital hand with a ton in each innings and the Kiwis got home by five wickets’ (Chas Keys, Australian Cricket October 1993)
    Citation ‘At 17 years and 112 days, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had become the second-youngest batsman to score a Test ton’ (Purandare 2005)

Electronics

  • A unit of mass equal to 907.18474 kilograms, 0.90718474 tonne, or 9.0718474 × 105 grams. Its symbol is tn, T, or t.
  • abbreviationtn
  • symbolT

Military

  • noun a unit of weight corresponding to 1,016.05 kilograms

Information & Library Science

  • abbreviation in Internet addresses, the top-level domain for Tunisia

Origin & History of “ton”

Ton originated as a variant of tun ‘barrel’ (OE). At first it was used for a unit of capacity, equal to the space occupied by a tun of wine, but by the end of the 15th century we find it being applied to a unit of weight. Tun itself was acquired from medieval Latin tunna, which was probably of Gaulish origin. Another of its descendants was Old French tonne, whose diminutive tonel was borrowed into English as tunnel (15th c.). this was originally used for a ‘tubular net for catching birds’, and then for a ‘chimney flue’ or ‘funnel’. It was not applied to an ‘underground passage’ until as recently as the late 18th century.
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