tin can

tin can (plural tin cans)

1. A container, usually cylindrical, made out of sheet metal coated with tin, or (by extension) aluminum.
2. (nautical, slang) A destroyer.
   • 2000, Donald F. Myers, Your War, My War: A Marine in Vietnam, →ISBN, page 305:

     As the tin can sailors started telling us what they thought of AKA sailors, which they said were inferior seamen habing to serve aboard an auxiliary vessel instead of a ship of the line;

3. (slang) An inexpensive car.
   • 2010, Heather Vogel Frederick, The Mother-Daughter Book Club, →ISBN, page 21:

     They're driving the same tin can they've had since Emma and I were in kindergarten.

   • 2016, Liz Nugent, Lying In Wait, →ISBN, page 134:

     We got a shockingly low price for it and bought a small tin-can run-around.

4. (slang) A motor home or trailer.
   • 2007, Errol L. Sweetser, Quest for the Ridge: A Childhood Adventure, →ISBN, page 34:

     I was too late as bearing down the ribbon of no return was a huge tin can piloted by two women with hair blowing over the side windows.

5. (science fiction, slang) A metal spaceship or space station.
   • 1969, David Bowie, “Space Oddity”:

     For here am I sitting in a tin can / Far above the world / Planet Earth is blue / And there's nothing I can do

6. (informal, sometimes derogatory) A nickname for a robot or artificial intelligence.

   Do as you’re told, tin can!

• (container): tin (British, Australian & Canadian), can (US & Canadian)

• can

• tin can telephone

• tinfoil
• aluminum can

• Jesse Sheidlower, editor (2001–2025), “tin can, n.”, in Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.

• Cantin, cannit, incant, tannic