dun
1 Americanverb (used with object)
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duns,
present (3rd person singular)
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dunned,
past participle, past
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dunning
present participle
noun
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a person, especially a creditor, who duns another.
-
a demand for payment, especially a written one.
noun
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a brownish-grey colour
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a horse of this colour
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angling
-
an immature adult mayfly (the subimago), esp one of the genus Ephemera
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an artificial fly imitating this or a similar fly
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adjective
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of a dun colour
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dark and gloomy
verb
noun
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a person, esp a hired agent, who importunes another for the payment of a debt
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a demand for payment, esp one in writing
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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dunsimple
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dunssimple
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have dunnedperfect
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has dunnedperfect
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am dunningprogressive
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are dunningprogressive
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is dunningprogressive
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have been dunningperfect progressive
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has been dunningperfect progressive
Past
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dunnedsimple
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had dunnedperfect
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was dunningprogressive
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were dunningprogressive
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had been dunningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of dun1
First recorded in 1620–30; origin obscure
Origin of dun2
First recorded before 1000; Middle English don, dun(ne), Old English dun; cognate with Old Saxon dun; probably of Celtic origin; compare Irish donn “dark,” Welsh dwnn “brownish”
Explanation
Use the adjective dun for something that’s a dusty grey brown color, like a dun cow, or the dun entry rug that used to be white. The noun and adjective forms of dun all relate to color. It probably comes from German roots, and may be related to the word dusk, as a dun color has a dull quality that you might associate with dusk or fading light. A dun horse is called a Dun. As a verb, to dun means to attempt to collect an overdue bill. You might dun your brother for that $10 he owes you from 3 months ago.
Vocabulary lists containing dun
Twelfth Night
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 7
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War Horse
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But developers won’t know it until state officials dun them.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
One of this crew, no surprise, ends up dead before the night is over, and an unusually somber Poirot must figure out whodunit, before he himself gets dun.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 13, 2023
I saw it a week before I started typing this and already don’t remember who dun exactly what.
From New York Times ● Jan. 3, 2020
Dun dun duuuun: The dark side of Silicon Valley philanthropy is finally getting some attention.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2018
Jumper was a dun mule with a narrow black stripe running along his backbone between his mane and tail.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
This unexpected shape cuts through the woods’ muted greens and duns, stirring hikers from ambling reveries, reminding them that they move through forests that once held much mightier trees.
From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2020
There are now more than a thousand designs, with threads blending in the traditional dull duns, purples and ochres of the Scottish Highlands, to brash patterns with bright reds, pinks and yellows.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 9, 2012
Similarly, Rich's seldom duns its 450,000 charge customers for payment.
From Time Magazine Archive
A self-styled inventor, he arranges elaborate booby-traps for duns; she collects cats.
From Time Magazine Archive
Abroad, where needy younger sons, When void the parent's treasure-chest, Take refuge from insistent duns, At urgent relatives' request; To live upon their slender wits, Or sums some maiden-aunt remits.
From Verse and Worse by Harry Graham
Companies could be sued by investors or dunned by the SEC if their disclosures were deemed inadequate or misleading.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
In some cases, the hospitals referred the individuals to bill collectors who dunned them for the payments.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2019
He had to be dunned for payments and lost three cellphones.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 30, 2018
Like 55% of their college-educated peers, the partygoers carry student loan debt; unlike their less fortunate peers, they’re not being dunned but wined and dined by their lender, the venture-capital-backed CommonBond.
From Forbes ● Dec. 10, 2014
Still, she never dunned me and was as generous with her servings of food during mealtime as ever.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
After the death of his former longtime lover Robert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Arthur learns that probate court is dunning him for years of back rent in Robert’s San Francisco home.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2022
While she does not know that person’s motive, she has a strong objection to dunning co-workers to contribute to gifts — doubly so when the recipient is the boss.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 20, 2022
Again, Wray’s explanatory discretion is an advantage, letting him bypass the hysteria of inquiry, the dunning “Why?” that tends to dominate in cases of Western converts to Islam.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 8, 2018
She is willing to humiliate herself, as the party requires, by dunning donors while on enforced fund-raising retreats in Vail, but she won’t let anyone buy her.
From New York Times ● Feb. 20, 2018
Dick Dawdle had land Worth two hundred a year, Yet from debt and from dunning He never was free, His intellect was not Surprisingly clear, But he never felt satisfied How it could be.
From Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 by E. W. (Edward William) Cole
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
