Word.ws English Dictionary

tanked

/ˈtæŋkt/

tanked is the simple past and past participle of tank.

Meaning of tank

Verb

tank (third-person singular simple present tanks, present participle tanking, simple past and past participle tanked)

  1. To fail or fall (often used in describing the economy or the stock market); to degenerate or decline rapidly; to plummet.
    • He told me about all the odd jobs he'd taken after I was born, when Michigan's economy was tanking. For one, he crisscrossed the Midwest buying old carpets from dentists' offices.2008 October, Davy Rothbart, “How I caught up with dad”, in Men's Health, volume 23, number 8, →ISSN, page 112
    1. (Internet) to flop; drop in popularity (of a musician/group)
  2. To attract the attacks of an enemy target in cooperative team-based combat, so that one's teammates can defeat the enemy in question more efficiently.
  3. (transitive) To put (fuel, etc.) into a tank.
    • Concrete below ground must be fully tanked to prevent water uptake.
  4. To deliberately lose a sports match with the intent of gaining a perceived future competitive advantage.
    • Beforehand, Swedish [national ice hockey team] coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson had ruminated about tanking against Slovakia to avoid powerful Canada or the Czechs in the quarters [i.e., quarterfinals of the 2006 Winter Olympic tournament], telling Swedish television, "One is cholera, the other the...2006 March 6, Michael Farber, “Swede Success”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), Sports Illustrated, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2012
  5. (slang) To resist damage; to be attacked without being hurt.
    • Unless Bane can tank Helicarrier-busting explosions I'm not sure how he stands a chance.2015 March 1, DudeFuckMath, “Bane [DC] vs Iron Fist [Marvel]”, in Reddit (r/whowouldwin), retrieved 19 Jun 2017

See all 26 meanings of tank

Adjective

tanked (comparative more tanked, superlative most tanked)

  1. (slang) Drunk.
    • And at a bar in Dolores I met a lady, a very tanked lady, who introduced herself as Miss E. X. Love. How delicious the lies we told!1996, Mark Irwin, Quick, Now, Always: Poems, BOA Editions, Ltd., →ISBN, page 56
    • […] and mingled some and then he started buying shots. We did a lot or at least I did. We got into a serious conversation about my troubles. I told him the whole story. After getting very tanked I realized the place had become empty.2018, Phillip Anthony Sainz-Hall, From The Bullet To The Bible: A Gangsters Tale, Gatekeeper Press, →ISBN
    Synonyms:
    tanked up

Synonyms of tanked

Forms of tanked

comparativemore tanked
superlativemost tanked

Phrases with tanked

Words that rhyme with tanked

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tanked

What does tanked mean?
Tanked means drunk.
What is tanked the simple past and past participle of?
Tanked is the simple past and past participle of tank.
What part of speech is tanked?
Tanked is an adjective.
How do you pronounce tanked?
Tanked is pronounced /ˈtæŋkt/.

Words near tanked in the dictionary

  1. tankbusting
  2. tankdozer
  3. tankdozers
  4. tankdrome
  5. tankdromes
  6. tanked
  7. tanked up
  8. tanker
  9. tanker ace
  10. tanker aircraft
  11. tanker boot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tanked (page history and authors); tank (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tanked.ogg.

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