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√TNː (TNN)
tuna (zool.) – WehrCowan1979.
▪ According to etymonline.com, Ar tunn (on which Engl tuna seems to be based) is a borrowing, probably made in Spain, from Lat thynnus, thunnus ‘tuna, tunny’, which is from Grk thýnnos ‘id.’, possibly with a literal sense of ‘darter’, from thýnein ‘to dart along’. For a possible relation between the Grk etymon and Ar tinnīn ‘dragon’, see ↗tinnīn.
▪ Rolland2014 summarizes: perhaps from Grk thýnnos ‘id.’, unless it is the other way round or both stem from the “Mediterranean word” mentioned by Chantraine1977.
See section CONCISE, above.
▪ Ar tunn, with def.art. al-tunn /at-tunn/, gave Span atun and, via Amer(Calif.)Span tuna, entered Engl as tuna by 1881. In contrast, Engl tunny (1520 s) ‘large sea-fish of the mackerel order’, seems to have taken another way where Ar was not involved: probably from mFr thon (C14), from oProv ton and directly from Lat thynnus, thunnus ‘tuna, tunny’, from Grk thýnnos ‘id.’ – EtymOnline. Grk thýnnos, however, may have a Sem background, cf. Ar ↗tinnīn ‘dragon’.
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