Vial vs. Tube — What's the Difference?

A vial (also known as a phial or flacon) is a small glass or plastic vessel or bottle, often used to store medication as liquids, powders or capsules. They can also be used as scientific sample vessels; for instance, in autosampler devices in analytical chromatography.

A hollow cylinder, especially one that conveys a fluid or functions as a passage.

A small container, usually with a closure, used especially for liquids.

An organic structure having the shape or function of a tube; a duct

To put or keep in or as if in a vial.

A small flexible cylindrical container sealed at one end and having a screw cap at the other, for pigments, toothpaste, or other pastelike substances.

A glass vessel or bottle, especially a small tube-shaped bottle used to store medicine, perfume or other chemicals.

(Music) The cylindrical part of a wind instrument.

(transitive) To put or keep in, or as in, a vial.

An electron tube.

A small bottle, usually of glass; a little glass vessel with a narrow aperture intended to be closed with a stopper; as, a vial of medicine.

A vacuum tube.

To put in a vial or vials.

(Botany) The lower, cylindrical part of a gamopetalous corolla or a gamosepalous calyx.

A small bottle that contains a drug (especially a sealed sterile container for injection by needle)

A tunnel.

An underground railroad system, especially the one in London, England.

The elongated space inside a wave when it is breaking.

An inner tube.

An inflatable tube or cushion made of rubber or plastic and used for recreational riding, as behind a motor boat or down a snow-covered slope.

Television

A television set.

Tubes(Informal) The fallopian tubes.

To provide with a tube; insert a tube in.

To place in or enclose in a tube.

To ride or float on an inflated tube for recreation.

Anything that is hollow and cylindrical in shape.

An approximately cylindrical container, usually with a crimped end and a screw top, used to contain and dispense semiliquid substances.

The London Underground railway system, originally referred to the lower level lines that ran in tubular tunnels as opposed to the higher ones which ran in rectangular section tunnels. (Often the tube.)

(obsolete) One of the tubular tunnels of the London Underground.

A tin can containing beer.

(surfing) A wave which pitches forward when breaking, creating a hollow space inside.

A television. Compare cathode ray tube and picture tube.

An idiot.

(transitive) To supply with, or enclose in, a tube.

To ride an inner tube.

To intubate.

A hollow cylinder, of any material, used for the conveyance of fluids, and for various other purposes; a pipe.

A telescope.

A vessel in animal bodies or plants, which conveys a fluid or other substance.

The narrow, hollow part of a gamopetalous corolla.

A priming tube, or friction primer. See under Priming, and Friction.

A small pipe forming part of the boiler, containing water and surrounded by flame or hot gases, or else surrounded by water and forming a flue for the gases to pass through.

A more or less cylindrical, and often spiral, case secreted or constructed by many annelids, crustaceans, insects, and other animals, for protection or concealment. See Illust. of Tubeworm.

A tunnel for a tube railway; also (Colloq.), a tube railway; a subway.

To furnish with a tube; as, to tube a well.

Conduit consisting of a long hollow object (usually cylindrical) used to hold and conduct objects or liquids or gases

Electronic device consisting of a system of electrodes arranged in an evacuated glass or metal envelope

A hollow cylindrical shape

(anatomy) any hollow cylindrical body structure

Electric underground railway

Provide with a tube or insert a tube into

Convey in a tube;

Ride or float on an inflated tube;

Place or enclose in a tube