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tare

tares

The tare of a container is its weight when it's empty, which is important to know when you can't weigh something without putting it into something else.

Since you can't measure the weight of, say, olive oil without putting it into a container, you need to find out how much the container weighs, its tare, so you don't add that to the weight of the olive oil. The same thing goes for cargo containers, trucks, airplanes, railroad cars. In chemistry, a tare is a counterweight used on this same principle. Tare is also a kind of weedy grass that grows in grain fields or that's raised for forage.

Definitions of tare
  1. noun
    weedy annual grass often occurs in grainfields and other cultivated land; seeds sometimes considered poisonous
    synonyms: Lolium temulentum, bearded darnel, cheat, darnel
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    type of:
    rye grass, ryegrass
    any of several annual or perennial Eurasian grasses
  2. noun
    any of several weedy vetches grown for forage
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    types:
    Vicia villosa, hairy tare, hairy vetch
    European vetch much cultivated as forage and cover crops
    type of:
    vetch
    any of various climbing plants of the genus Vicia having pinnately compound leaves that terminate in tendrils and small variously colored flowers; includes valuable forage and soil-building plants
  3. noun
    the weight of a motor vehicle, railroad car, or aircraft without its fuel or cargo
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    type of:
    weight
    the vertical force exerted by a mass as a result of gravity
  4. noun
    an adjustment made for the weight of the packaging in order to determine the net weight of the goods
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    type of:
    adjustment, allowance
    an amount added or deducted on the basis of qualifying circumstances
  5. noun
    (chemical analysis) a counterweight used in chemical analysis; consists of an empty container that counterbalances the weight of the container holding chemicals
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    type of:
    balance, counterbalance, counterpoise, counterweight, equaliser, equalizer
    a weight that balances another weight
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