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''dun'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔

dun - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

dun (usually uncountable, plural duns)

  • A brownish grey colour.
    • ✤ dun:
    • ✤ Synonym: claybank

Adjective

dun (not comparable)

  • Of a brownish grey colour.
    • ✤ Come, thick Night,
      And pall thee in the dunneſt ſmoake of Hell,
      That my keene Knife ſee not the Wound it makes,
      Nor Heauen peepe through the Blanket of the darke,
      To cry, hold, hold.      1
    • ✤ My Miſtres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,
      Currall is farre more red, then her lips red,
      If ſnow be white, why then her breſts are dun:
      If hairs be wiers, black wiers grow on her head: […]      2
    • ✤ Red o’er the forest glows the setting sun,/The line of yellow light dies fast away/That crown’d the eastern copse, and chill and dun/Falls on the moor the brief November day.3
    • ✤ Where is the nobility in these streets paved with greasy carbon and dun ash?4

Noun

dun (plural duns)

  • (countable) A collector of debts, especially one who is insistent and demanding.
    • ✤ “The truth is, Mr. Curl, I cannot write when I am plagued about trifles; and a tiresome dun this morning put to flight every idea that I had in the world.”
      “Mr. Maynard,” said the bookseller, in a solemn tone, “it is very wrong to run in debt.”      5
    • ✤ Look ye, gentlemen, I have lived with credit in the world, and it grieves my heart never to stir out of my doors but to be pulled by the sleeve by some rascally dun or other.6
    • ✤ Melancholy duns came looking for him at all hours.7
    • ✤ ‘Frank’s worried about duns,’ she said as the butler went away.8
  • An urgent request or demand of payment.
    • ✤ Miss Hoppin received a dun for volume 9 1840–1 which Mr. James McConnell, (who now pays the above) is sure was paid.9

Verb

dun (third-person singular simple present duns, present participle dunning, simple past and past participle dunned)

  • (transitive) To ask or beset a debtor for payment.
    • ✤ And hath she sent so soon to dun?10
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC: Folio Society 1973, p. 577:
      • ✤ Of all he had received from Lady Bellaston, not above five guineas remained and that very morning he had been dunned by a tradesman for twice that sum.
  • (transitive) To harass by continually repeating e.g. a request.
    • ✤ Rich bitches who had to be dunned for their milk bills would pay him right now.11

Noun

dun (plural duns)

  • (countable) A newly hatched, immature mayfly; a mayfly subimago.
    • ✤ Also, duns are dull and generally sober colored, whilst spinners are more brightly colored and shining and their wings are clear and transparent.12
  • (countable, fishing) A fly made to resemble the mayfly subimago.
    • ✤ We have besides for this Month a little Dun call’d a whirling Dun (though it is not the whirling Dun indeed, which is one of the best Flies we have) and for this the dubbing must be of the bottom fur of a Squirrels tail and the wing of the grey feather of a Drake.13

Noun

dun (plural duns)

  • An ancient or medieval fortification; especially a hill-fort in Scotland or Ireland.
    • ✤ Pampedun, or Pandon, was probably a place of residence from the earliest times; its sheltered situation for boats, and proximity to the ancient way over the river, protected perhaps by a dun or camp, on the height above […] possibly gave origin to the ancient name of the place, Pampedun, from the British pant, a hollow, and dun, a fort or camp, Pant-y-dun.14
  • (archaeology) A structure in the Orkney or Shetland islands or in Scotland consisting of a roundhouse surrounded by a circular wall; a broch.
    • ✤ Smaller than the broch was the dun, another type of stone-built ‘roundhouse’.15

Verb

dun

  • (nonstandard, informal) Eye dialect spelling of done: past participle of do.
    • ✤ Now, ya dun it!
    • ✤ …a wise old lady exclaimed, “Why Mrs. M. warn’t you orful skeerd wunst when you seed a dog fight? […] an that ere big yaller dog bit orf your baby’s hand that minit; in cors he dun it, so now that settles it.”16
    • ✤ “Oh, Because I want their dollar.
      I don’t want Anything they’ve not got. I never dun.
      I’m there, and they can pay me if they like.
      I go nowhere on purpose: I happen by.
      Sorry there is no cup to give you a drink. […]      17
  • (nonstandard, informal) Pronunciation spelling of don’t: contraction of do +‎ not.
    • ✤ Fwhere’s he come from, I dun’ no’. French or English, I dun’ no’. But a gintleman born, I know.18

Verb

dun (third-person singular simple present duns, present participle dunning, simple past and past participle dunned)

  • (transitive, dated) To cure, as codfish, by laying them, after salting, in a pile in a dark place, covered with saltgrass or a similar substance.
    • ✤ Dun-fish are of a superior quality for the table, and are cured in such a manner as to give them a dun or brownish color. Fish for dunning are caught early in spring, and sometimes February, at the Isle of Shoals.19

Noun

dun (plural duns)

  • A mound or small hill.

Interjection

dun

  • Imitating a deep bass note, such as that found in suspenseful music.
    • ✤ How would you deal with that power? (Dun, dun, DUN! Insert dramatic music here.)20
    • ✤ Dun, dun! Dun, dun! As the music continues, the long shot of Griff’s walk is broken down into repeating tight shots of his face, his legs, and his shifting point of view of Brockie.21
    • ✤ ‘DUN DUN DUN DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN! DUN DUN DUN DUNDUN-DUN-DUN… PRESSURE!’ By 2.05 a.m. I am Very Awake Indeed and the catastrophising continues.22
    • ✤ Whenever that iconic riff in the score cued up— Dun dun… dun dun… dun dun dun dun dun-dun-dun-dun… —Jack’s heart would race, and she’d feel the fear on her skin.23

Noun

dun (plural duns)

  • Alternative form of dhoon (“Himalayan valley”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /dʌn/
  • (Northern England) IPA: /dʊn/
  • Rhymes: -ʌn
  • Homophones: done, Donn, Donne, Dunn, Dunne

Etymology 1

From Middle English dun, donn, dunne, from Old English dunn (“dun, dingy brown, bark-colored, brownish black”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡duʀn, from Proto-Germanic ﹡duznaz, ﹡dusnaz (“brown, yellow”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡dʰewh₂- (“to smoke, raise dust”). Cognate with Old Saxon dun (“brown, dark”), Old High German tusin (“ash-gray, dull brown, pale yellow, dark”), Old Norse dunna (“female mallard; duck”).

Alternative etymology derives the Old English word from Brythonic (compare Middle Welsh dwnn (“dark (red)”)), from Proto-Celtic ﹡dusnos (compare Old Irish donn and Scottish Gaelic donn (“brown”)), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡dʰews- (compare Old Saxon dosan (“chestnut brown”)). More at dusk.

Etymology 2

Unknown; perhaps a variant of din. Several sources suggest origin from Joe Dun, the name of a bailiff known for arresting debtors, but this is controversial.

Etymology 3

Uncertain; likely from the color.

Etymology 4

From Irish dún or Scottish Gaelic dùn, from Proto-Celtic ﹡dūnom (“fortress”). Cognate with Welsh dinas (“city”). Doublet of town.

Etymology 5

See do.

Etymology 6

Likely from the color of fish so prepared.

Etymology 7

See dune.

Etymology 8

Imitative.

Etymology 9

Borrowed from Hindustani दून (dūn)/دُون (dūn). False cognate of dun (sense 4)/doon, and dun (sense 7)/dune

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

  1. c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v], page 134, column 2, lines 48–49: ↩

  2. 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 130”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […] ‎, London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1827, [John Keble], “Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity”, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume II, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B] y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 85: ↩

  4. 2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: Terminal One (Legendary): ↩

  5. 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 162–163: ↩

  6. 1889 [1712], John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull, London: Cassell & Co., →OCLC, page 71: ↩

  7. 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XVIII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC: ↩

  8. 1970, John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse, New York, published 2007, page 102: ↩

  9. 1842, A.B.G., “Errata”, in Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate, volume 13, →OCLC, page 251: ↩

  10. 1768, Jonathan Swift, The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London: C. Bathurst, →OCLC, Miscellanies in Verse, page 309: ↩

  11. 1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, published 2010, page 107: ↩

  12. 1966, John Harris, An Angler’s Entomology, New York: Barnes, →OCLC, page 16: ↩

  13. 1676, Charles Cotton, The Compleat Angler. Being Instructions how to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a Clear Stream, London: Richard Marriott, and Henry Brome, →OCLC, March, page 59: ↩

  14. 1858, Henry MacLauchlan, Memoir written during a survey of the Roman Wall, through the counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, in the years 1852-1854, London: Printed for private circulation, →OCLC, page 9: ↩

  15. 2013, T.J. Clarkson, The Makers of Scotland: Picts, Romans, Gaels and Vikings, Edinburgh: Birlinn, →ISBN: ↩

  16. 1895 May, S.L.N. Foote, “Correspondence”, in International Journal of Medicine and Surgery ‎, volume 8, retrieved 2016–10–13, page 194: ↩

  17. 2001 April 1, Robert Frost, Poems by Robert Frost: A Boy’s Will and North of Boston ‎, Penguin, →ISBN, →OCLC: ↩

  18. 1901, Gilbert Parker, The Right of Way, New York and London: Harper, →OCLC: ↩

  19. 1832, James Thacher, History of Plymouth; from its first settlement in 1620, to the year 1832, Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon, →OCLC, page 317: ↩

  20. 2009, Carrie Tucker, I Love Geeks: The Official Handbook, Avon, Massachusetts: Adams Media, →ISBN: ↩

  21. 2015, Lisa Dombrowski, The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You, page 113: ↩

  22. 2016, Helen Russell, Leap Year: How small steps can make a giant difference: ↩

  23. 2020, Spencer Hamilton, The Fear: A Pandemic Horror Novel: ↩

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