tamkin

tamkin noun: a tampion.

Noun (1)

tamkin (plural tamkins)

A tampion.
- The superabundant wax is next removed, and two coats of paint laid over the entire surface of both plate and letters, the projecting letters being afterwards painted, by the aid of a tamkin or rubber, in a different colour or shade from that of the plate, the whole being finally coated with copal...1868, Great Britain Patent Office, Bennet Woodcroft, Patents for Inventions
- But he do say that people do complain of Sir Edward Spragg, that he hath not done extraordinary; and more of Sir W. Jenings, that he came up with his tamkins in his guns.1887, Samuel Pepys, Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys
A brick housing that protects an access point where pipes beneath London could be plugged for maintenance.
- Its course was punctuated by tamkins, small brick buildings whose name, a variant of the word "tompion," still in use for the plug closing the muzzle of a gun, denoted their purpose: an access point for plugging off sections which required isolation so that repairs could be carried out.1959, Surrey Archaeological Society, Surrey Archaeological Collections: Relating to the History and Antiquities of the County, page 1
- The tamkins were access points where Wolsey's water engineers could isolate sections of the pipeline which were in need of attention.2010, Stephen Smith, Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets, →ISBN

tamkin (uncountable)

A woman's duty to submit to her husband's will.
- […] concepts such as tamkin (woman's duty to submit to her husband's will) and nushuz (her refusal to submit, rebellion), which legitimate women's subordination in marriage, but instead they add two qualifiers.1996, Mai Yamani, Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives, page 294
- It's a wife's lack of tamkin that causes such a thing. Why aren't you prepared to be in tamkin?2002, Donna Lee Bowen, Evelyn A. Early, Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, →ISBN, page 140

Sluice valves, the medieval forerunner of stop valves, were installed and to avoid tampering were protected within brick housings called tamkins.2017, Julian McCarthy, Kingston upon Thames in 50 Buildings:
Reformist Islamist women have also proposed to modify the issue of tamkin.2002, Hammed Shahidian, Women in Iran: Emerging voices in the women's movement, page 56:

plural	tamkins

What does tamkin mean?: Tamkin means a tampion.
How do you use tamkin in a sentence?: Sluice valves, the medieval forerunner of stop valves, were installed and to avoid tampering were protected within brick housings called tamkins.
What part of speech is tamkin?: Tamkin is a noun.
What is the plural of tamkin?: The plural of tamkin is tamkins.

Adapted from Wiktionary: tamkin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “tamkin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tamkin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.