tube

From Middle French tube, from Latin tubus (“tube, pipe”).

• IPA^(key): /tjuːb/
• (yod dropping) IPA^(key): /tuːb/

• Audio (UK)

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• Rhymes: -uːb

• Audio (UK)

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• Audio (AU)

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tube (plural tubes)

1. Anything that is hollow and cylindrical in shape.
   • 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], OCLC 752825175, page 035:

     But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶ […] The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window […], and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at them.

2. An approximately cylindrical container, usually with a crimped end and a screw top, used to contain and dispense semiliquid substances.

   A tube of toothpaste.

3. (Britain, colloquial, often capitalized as Tube) The London Underground railway system, originally referred to the lower level lines that ran in tubular tunnels as opposed to the higher ones which ran in rectangular section tunnels. (Often the tube.)

   I took the tube to Waterloo and walked the rest of the way.

4. (Australia, slang) A tin can containing beer (or other beverage?).
   • 1995, Sue Butler, Lonely Planet Australian Phrasebook: Language Survival Kit

     Tinnie: a tin of beer — also called a tube.

   • 2002, Andrew Swaffer, Katrina O'Brien, Darroch Donald, Footprint Australia Handbook: The Travel Guide [text repeated in Footprint West Coast Australia Handbook (2003)]

     Beer is also available from bottleshops (or bottle-o's) in cases (or 'slabs') of 24-36 cans (‘tinnies' or ‘tubes') or bottles (‘stubbies') of 375ml each.

   • 2004, Paul Matthew St. Pierre, Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L'Oeuvre Bizarre de Barry Humphries

     That Humphries should imply that, in the Foster's ads, Hogan's ocker appropriated McKenzie's discourse (specifically the idiom "crack an ice-cold tube") reinforces my contention.

5. (surfing) A wave which pitches forward when breaking, creating a hollow space inside.
6. (Canada, US, colloquial) A television. Also, derisively, boob tube. British: telly.

   Are you just going to sit around all day and watch the tube?

7. (Scotland) Idiot.
   • 2007, Christopher Brookmyre, Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, →ISBN, page 231:

     'Don't be a bloody tube, Jack,' she told me. (I always loved it when she used Scottish terms of abuse in that English accent of hers.)

   • 2010, Karen Campbell, The Twilight Time, →ISBN:

     I'm a tube? Who got done for speeding? Who got lifted for bloody assault?

Use for beer can was popularised in UK by a long-running series of advertisements for Foster's lager, where Paul Hogan used a phrase "crack an ice-cold tube" previously associated with Barry Humphries' character Barry McKenzie. (For discussion of this see Paul Matthew St. Pierre's book cited above.)

• See also Thesaurus:tube

tube (third-person singular simple present tubes, present participle tubing, simple past and past participle tubed)

1. To supply with, or enclose in, a tube.

   She tubes lipstick in the cosmetics factory.

2. To ride an inner tube.

   They tubed down the Colorado River.

3. (medicine, colloquial) To intubate.

   The patient was tubed.

• tube on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Bute, bute

From Latin tubus (“tube, pipe”).

• IPA^(key): /tyb/

• audio

  (file)

tube m (plural tubes)

1. pipe
2. tube
3. (informal, music) a hit

   Chacune de ses chansons était un tube.

   Every one of his/her songs was a hit.

4. (slang) money

• “tube” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• bute, buté

• Rhymes: -ube

tube f

1. plural of tuba

tube

1. vocative singular of tubus

From Latin tubus.

tube m (plural tubes)

1. conduit; canal; pipe

• English: tube (borrowed)
• French: tube

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (tube, supplement)

• choob

• IPA^(key): /tjub/, /tʃub/

tube (plural tubes)

1. wanker, asshole, dickhead
   • 1994, Irvine Welsh, Acid House:

     Come ahead then, ya fuckin weedjie cunts. Ah’m no exactly gaunny burst oot greetin cause some specky cunt’s five minutes late wi ma feed now, um uh? Fucking tube.

   • 2013, Donal McLaughlin, translating Pedro Lenz, Naw Much of a Talker, Freight Books 2013, p. 4:

     Sorry but Uli's just a tube [transl. Pajass] but. Ah didnae say that tae Paco, o course. Ah keep it tae masel jist.