1. [n]  a man who serves as a sailor
2. [n]  any of various dark heavy viscid substances obtained as a residue
3. [v]  cover with tar or asphalt, of roads
4. [v]  coat with tar, as of roofs

1. \Tar\, n. [Abbrev. from tarpaulin.]
   A sailor; a seaman. [Colloq.] --Swift.
   
   

2. \Tar\, n. [OE. terre, tarre, AS. teru, teoru; akin to D.
   teer, G. teer, theer, Icel. tjara, Sw. tj["a]ra, Dan.
   ti[ae]re, and to E. tree. [root]63. See {Tree}.]
   A thick, black, viscous liquid obtained by the distillation
   of wood, coal, etc., and having a varied composition
   according to the temperature and material employed in
   obtaining it.
   
   {Coal tar}. See in the Vocabulary.
   
   {Mineral tar} (Min.), a kind of soft native bitumen.
   
   {Tar board}, a strong quality of millboard made from junk and
      old tarred rope. --Knight.
   
   {Tar water}.
   (a) A cold infusion of tar in water, used as a medicine.
   (b) The ammoniacal water of gas works.
   
   {Wood tar}, tar obtained from wood. It is usually obtained by
      the distillation of the wood of the pine, spruce, or fir,
      and is used in varnishes, cements, and to render ropes,
      oakum, etc., impervious to water.
   
   

3. \Tar\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Tarred}; p. pr. & vb. n.
   {Tarring}.]
   To smear with tar, or as with tar; as, to tar ropes; to tar
   cloth.
   
   {To tar and feather a person}. See under {Feather}, v. t.
   
   

("Tape ARchive", following ar) unix's general purpose archive utility and the file format it uses. Tar was originally intended for use with magnetic tape but, though it has several command line options related to tape, it is now used more often for packaging files together on other media, e.g. for distribution via the internet.

The resulting archive, a "tar file" (humourously, "tarball") is often compressed, using gzip or some other form of compression (see tar and feather).

There is a gnu version of tar called gnutar with several improvements over the standard versions.

filename extension: .tar

mime type: unregistered, but commonly application/x-tar

unix manual page: tar(1).

Compare shar, zip.