dun
/dʌn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.33 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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: [...]"
- "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."
- "Where is the nobility in these streets paved with greasy carbon and dun ash?"
- ""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.""
- "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."
Etymology
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.