Hun

[ huhn ]

noun

1. a member of a nomadic and warlike Asian people who devastated or controlled large parts of eastern and central Europe and who exercised their greatest power under Attila in the 5th century a.d.
2. (often lowercase) a barbarous, destructive person; vandal.
3. Older Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a German, especially a German soldier in World War I or II.

Hun

/ hʌn /

noun

1. a member of any of several Asiatic nomadic peoples speaking Mongoloid or Turkic languages who dominated much of Asia and E Europe from before 300 bc , invading the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries a.d
2. See German
   informal.
   (esp in World War I) a derogatory name for a German
3. informal.
   a vandal

Sensitive Note

The disparaging and offensive use of this term likens the Germans to the barbarous and warlike Huns of the 4th and 5th centuries. The source of the comparison was a speech by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1900, encouraging German soldiers bound for China to act toward the Chinese just like “the Huns a thousand years ago.”

Derived Forms

• ˈHunˌlike, adjective

Other Words From

• Hunlike adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of Hun¹

before 900; 1895–1900 Hun fordef 3; singular of Huns, Old English Hūnas; cognate with Old Norse Hūnar; akin to Late Latin Hunnī

Word History and Origins

Origin of Hun¹

Old English Hūnas, from Late Latin Hūnī, from Turkish Hun-yū

Example Sentences

Director Yoo Dong-hun and screenwriter Lee Jung-u were arrested for firebombing theaters.

From The Daily Beast

Prime Minister Hun Sen had taken power in a bloody coup in July 1997.

From The Daily Beast

He might have elicited a smile rather than a cringe had he gone to that reliable standby, “to the right of Attila the Hun.”

From The Daily Beast

Leakhena Hun, a 22-year-old student, said she is one of few Khmers her age who are following the trial.

From The Daily Beast

I always felt Attila The Hun set the clearest path for himself, what would today be called his “mission statement.”

From The Daily Beast

But as year after year rolled away, Uncle Gambo would still say, "I'se a hun'erd and ten yeah ole."

From Project Gutenberg

You will see the permanently crippled and those that wait for death, a slow and lingering death from the Hun's poisonous gases.

From Project Gutenberg

The Red Cross floated over the building, but that emblem of mercy made no difference to the Hun.

From Project Gutenberg

The neighbors coming in to see the strange discovery, tore one of the pieces to atoms, in the true Hun and Vandal style.

From Project Gutenberg

In Germany hunne means giant, and the term “Hun,” meant radically anyone formidable or gigantic.

From Project Gutenberg

About This Word

What else does hun mean?

Hun can be a term of endearment, a phonetic spelling from a shortening of honey.

It’s also used as a derogatory slang term for women involved in multi-level marketing.

Where does hun come from?

The slang hun (from honey as an affectionate or familiar term of address) comes from a stereotype about women who work in multi-level marketing (MLM). The stereotype is that these women flatter people, or try to sound folksy, when attempting to make a sale or attract a new recruit, but becoming nasty upon resistance or rejection. For instance: Hey, hun, this could be your opportunity to make millions. Hun, as an affectionate term of address in a place of a specific name, also allows for quickly creating marketing messages in emails or on social media.

In MLM, salespersons have to work their networks to get new recruits and sales. But MLMs are popularly seen as pyramid schemes, and MLM workers as bombarding their friends and family about “exciting new business opportunities.” The stereotypically spammy nature of these messages earned these huns the additional nickname: hunbot on online forums like Reddit, a reference to the programmed language of chatbots or spambots.

Hun spread online in the mid-2010s, when MLM became more commonplace on social media, especially in Facebook groups among some young, stay-at-home moms, the type imagined to use a chummy hun.

Unrelated meanings of hun include the fearsome 5th-century Asiatic nomads, the Huns, notably Attila; the Irish Catholic slur hun for a Northern Irish Protestant; and the derogatory slang hun for a German, especially a German soldier during World War I and II.

How is hun used in real life?

People who oppose MLM—in particular ex-participants who felt taken advantage of—are the ones who most frequently use the terms hun and hunbot. Active MLM workers generally find hun offensive; they prefer to think of themselves as entrepreneurs.

More examples of hun:

I had been ‘hunzoned’; lulled into a false sense of security with someone who purported to be interested in me as a person, but was actually just trying to recruit me into their multi-level marketing scheme.
—Jessica Lindsay, Metro, July 2019

“ … MLM sellers, or huns, trying to capitalize on people’s greatest tragedies and heartbreaks in the most crass, opportunistic, and grotesque ways. Below, for example, a hun shills her CBD oil as a cure for PTSD by piggybacking off of Memorial Day.”
—Cassidy McGillicuddy, Patheos, May 2019

Note

This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the term’s history, meaning, and usage.