tanka

Noun

tanka

1. A form of Japanese verse in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 morae.
   • 1996, Makoto Ueda, Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology, →ISBN:

     Like haiku, tanka is a short, classical verse form that has attracted considerable attention in this century.

Noun

tanka

1. a strong, forceful expression
2. a Tibetan painting of the Buddha on fabric.

Alternative forms

• Tanka
• tankia

Noun

tanka (plural tankas)

1. An ethnic group of boat people in the Canton area.
   • 1831, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia:

     And when foreigners go and come from Whampoa to Canton, tanka-boats and boats with families must not be employed.

   • 1835, The Chinese Repository, page 392:

     At every landing place behind the hongs, (i. e. in the front of the factories,) where barbarians reside, they must not allow the tanka boats to anchor.

   • 1845, Miscellaneous Remarks Upon the Government, History, Religions, Literature, Agriculture, Arts, Trades, Manners, and Customs of the Chinese:

     In Macao roads, where vessels usually stop before proceeding up to the Canton anchorage, the tanka boats are generally navigated by young girls, in competition with whom the old women meet with poor encouragement.

   • 1927, Herbert Ernest Gregory, Report of the director for 1926, page 6:

     Speaking of an interesting group of people near Canton, he says : Both the Tanka (boat people) and Hakka (another ethnic group, distinct from the Cantonese, living on land) have distinctive dialects and differ in phvsique from The Cantonese.

2. A kind of boat used in Canton, about 25 feet long and often rowed by tanka women; junk.
   • 1837, Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the eastern courts of CochinChina, Siam and Muscat:

     Immediately on our nearing the harbour, a race took place among the amphibious damsels that inhabit the numerous sampans, tanka or egg-boats, which always lie within a short distance of the shore.

   • 1866, William Ainsworth, All Around the World:

     The tanka is a small boat, almost as wide as long, and differing therein much from the sharp and narrow canoes of the Malays. The crew generally consists of an elderly woman, who sits or stands at the stern, rotating with a vigorous and experienced arm the long oar which is the great propeller of all boats in the Celestial Empire.

   • 1967, Stan Hugill, Sailortown, page 56:

     These craft, the tanka, were the homes of thousands of true seamen — people who rarely came ashore ;

Noun

tanka (plural tankas)

1. (historical) A coin and unit of currency of varying value, formerly used in parts of India and Central Asia.
   • 1994, Stephen Frederic Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750, p. 29:

     In Uzbek Turan Shah Rukh's tanka remained the standard silver coin and weighed an average of slightly more than 5 g throughout the sixteenth century.

   • 1997, Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold, HarperCollins 2013, p. 42:

     The last of the gifts was fifteen horses with velvet and jewelled trappings and one hundred thousand tankas in cash.

   • 2011, Najaf Haider, in Irfan Habib (Ed.), Economic History of Medieval India, 1200-1500, Vol. VIII part 1, p. 152:

     A major shift in the usage of silver and billion coinage came about in the second quarter of the fourteenth century when Muḥammad Tughluq, after striking the ṭanka of 169.8 grains in the beginning, replaced it with a coin of lower weight (144 grains) called ‘adli, which was then treated as the standard ṭanka.

Declension

Declension

Conjugation

Related terms

• tanka upp
• tankning