How to Use tonne in a Sentence

tonne

noun
  • Thousands of tonnes of metal type must have been melted down.
    — The Economist, 18 Dec. 2019
  • At the other end of the scale Germany saw the largest inflows, of four tonnes.
    — Royston Wild, Forbes.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Stratos captures 500,000 tonnes per year.
    — Tejasri Gururaj, Interesting Engineering, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Stratos runs around $400-500 per tonne captured.
    — Tejasri Gururaj, Interesting Engineering, 3 Oct. 2025
  • But like trees and soils, these approaches require a lot of land to sink a tonne of carbon.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 15 Sep. 2025
  • In the early years Mr Khamar would haul 20 tonnes from each acre of pond.
    — The Economist, 15 Feb. 2018
  • The couple have grown 100 bags this year (about ten tonnes) and sold almost all of it.
    — The Economist, 28 Sep. 2019
  • Plans are underway to notch it up to 450 million tonnes in the next few years.
    — Mimansa Verma, Quartz, 11 Apr. 2023
  • It is claimed the rocket can send 27 tonnes (roughly the mass of a small house) toward the moon.
    — Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 16 Aug. 2025
  • The 260-tonne ferry took over two years to develop.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 19 Jan. 2026
  • Over 70 tonnes has been dug out of the space, and the house needs to be property underpinned.
    — Jack Beresford, MSNBC Newsweek, 20 Aug. 2025
  • The world uses nearly 50bn tonnes of sand and gravel a year—almost twice as much as a decade ago.
    — The Economist, 18 Jan. 2020
  • Central banks bough 1,079 tonnes of the precious metal last year.
    — Royston Wild, Forbes, 5 May 2023
  • The process emits about 10 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of hydrogen.
    — Matthias Mueller, IEEE Spectrum, 19 Aug. 2023
  • The digging referred to here is the extraction of about 6,000 tonnes of wild yams.
    — William Beinart, Quartz Africa, 10 Feb. 2020
  • That is the weight of a single Nagatitan, roughly around 27 tonnes.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 14 May 2026
  • The United States produced around 5 billion metric tonnes of the gas in the same year.
    — Nicolas Niarchos, Time, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Add in a payload of over 100 tonnes and Starship is a monster by any standard.
    — David Szondy may 31, New Atlas, 31 May 2026
  • And for all our other coverage, including tonnes of exclusive sales news, check this out.
    — Max Goldbart, Deadline, 20 Feb. 2026
  • The edge of the cliff is fractured with cracks, and every year along the iconic white cliffs, hundreds of tonnes of rocks fall onto the beach below.
    — Ben Cusack, Fox News, 25 June 2018
  • In India and Japan, holdings rose by one tonne and two tonnes respectively.
    — Royston Wild, Forbes.com, 8 Aug. 2025
  • While Summer most likely has tonnes of toys and a dog bed, there’s something about cardboard boxes that entices pets.
    — Lucy Notarantonio, MSNBC Newsweek, 9 Dec. 2025
  • That is enough to slash carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 35,000 tonnes per year.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 29 June 2026
  • Germany’s construction sector produces tens of millions of tonnes of rubble each year.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 22 Jan. 2026
  • Half a million tonnes in displacement, the ship would have had the effective firepower of an entire fleet in one ship.
    — Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 7 May 2026
  • The driver of the three-tonne, five-meter-long speedboat was a local lagoon guide who had rented the boat for the day with his girlfriend.
    — Escher Walcott, PEOPLE, 29 Apr. 2026
  • This colossal structure is about 307 meters tall and weighs up to 8,000 tonnes.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 29 June 2026
  • To measure the centre of gravity of the submarine, 16 tonnes of lead weights are brought on board and moved side-to-side.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Proteus can carry payloads exceeding one tonne.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 16 Jan. 2026
  • The bridge section alone weighs about 82,000 tonnes, with bearings weighing up to 20 tonnes each.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 16 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tonne.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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