tunnels

Noun

tunnel (plural tunnels)

1. An underground or underwater passage.
   • In 1865 an outfit called the East London Railway Company bought the Brunel tunnel for £800,000, and in 1869 they opened a railway through it.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 90
2. A passage through or under some obstacle.
   • 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.1921 June, Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real”, in Harper’s Bazar, volume LVI, number 6 (2504 overall), New York, N.Y.: International Magazine Company, →ISSN, →OCLC
3. A hole in the ground made by an animal, a burrow.
4. 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 tonnell thence, / The smoke forth threw1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 29

See all 14 meanings of tunnel