tank engine

1. 1.

   a locomotive that carries its own fuel and water; no tender is needed

   Synonymstank locomotive

   Broaderlocomotive

Questions about tank engine

What does tank engine mean?

tank engine means "a locomotive that carries its own fuel and water; no tender is needed".

What is another word for tank engine?

Close synonyms include tank locomotive. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is tank engine a common word?

tank engine is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.