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dun

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English has two words spelled dun: the greyish-brown colour, inherited from Old English, and the verb and noun for pressing a debtor, which came up in the 17th century.[1][2]

Pronunciation

dun1 dull greyish brown

Etymology

The colour is inherited from Middle English dun, also donn and dunne,[3][4] inherited from Old English dunn (“dingy brown, dark-coloured”).[5][2][6][7][8] Its further origin is uncertain.[9] The OED compares Old Saxon dūn (“a kind of dark brown”) and thinks it probably related to the Celtic base of Old Irish donn and of Welsh dwn, both used of shades of brown, though how they are related is unclear.[9] Etymonline, Barnhart and Weekley take the Old English word as perhaps from Celtic,[5][6][10] comparing Scottish Gaelic donn (“dull, dark brown”),[5][10] and Holthausen also thought it might be a Celtic loanword.[8] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford relate it to dosan (“chestnut brown”) and Old High German tusin, and so to dusk;[7][11][6] Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Germanic *duznaz (“brown, yellow”).[3] Klein derives the whole group from an Indo-European base Proto-Indo-European *dhus- with a suffix *-no-,[4] and Etymonline from Proto-Indo-European *dusnos (“dark”).[5] The OED also compares Old Norse dunna (“mallard”).[9][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Dull or dingy brown, or dark: in Old English charter bounds of 953 in Barnhart's dating,[6] and in the early Old English record of the OED.[9] The OED notes that, as with other Old English colour words, it is often impossible to tell whether a given use means a brown shade or simply darkness.[9]

Semantic evolution

Old English also had a verb meaning to grow dark or dim, used until about 1400,[9] and compounds such as dunfealu, dun-fallow.[9] The noun, first a dun horse, appears in Chaucer's Manciple's Prologue (about 1390) in the proverb dun is in the mire, things are at a standstill,[9][5] which later became the name of a Christmas parlour game in which a log standing for a stuck cart horse is lifted and carried off (1655).[9] Shakespeare has dun's the mouse, keep still (1597).[9] The noun for the colour itself is recorded from 1542,[9] from the 1560s in Etymonline.[5] Johnson (1755) defined the adjective as "a colour partaking of brown and black" and, quoting Macbeth and Paradise Lost, as "dark; gloomy".[12] Anglers have called various dusky flies duns since Cotton's Compleat Angler (1676),[9] and in Newfoundland discoloured, badly cured cod is dun (1806).[9] The word is also behind surnames such as Dunn and Dunne,[5] and the OED notes early surnames like le Dunn (1198).[9] In Scottish, Irish and English dialects it named birds and rocks by their colour, as in dun-bird and dun-crow.[13]

Timeline

  • 953 – dull brown, dark, in Old English charter bounds.[6][9]
  • late Old English – verb, to grow dark or dim (obsolete by 1400).[9]
  • before 1325 – the Middle English form dune, in the Cursor Mundi.[6]
  • c. 1390 – noun, a dun horse, in dun is in the mire.[9][5]
  • 1542 – noun, the colour dun.[9]
  • 1597 – dun's the mouse, keep quiet.[9]
  • 1676 – in angling, a dusky fly or an artificial fly imitating it.[9]
  • 1766 – verb, to make dun, darken.[9]
  • 1806 – of cod, discoloured by poor curing, in Newfoundland.[9]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Of a dull greyish-brown colour, like the coat of a mouse or a donkey.[9][2][11]
  2. Of a horse: having a sandy or greyish-yellow coat, usually with a dark stripe along the back and dark mane, tail and legs.[9][2][11]
  3. (literary) Dark, dim or gloomy.[9][12][2]

Noun

  1. A dun horse.[9][2][11]
  2. A dull greyish-brown colour.[9][2][11]
  3. (angling) A mayfly in its first winged stage, or an artificial fly made to imitate it.[9][2][11]

Verb

  1. To make dun in colour; to darken or dull.[9][2][11]

Word family

  • dunness
  • dunnock

dun2 to press for payment

Etymology

The verb meaning to press for payment of a debt, and the noun beside it, are of unknown origin.[2][14][10][15] The OED calls the origin uncertain, finds it unclear whether the noun or the verb came first, and notes that the verb seems to have been new in the 1620s.[9] Etymonline and Barnhart suggest an extended use of dunnen (“to sound, resound, make a din”), a dialect variant of din,[5][6] and the OED mentions the same idea, of a creditor clamouring for payment;[9] it takes that Middle English verb, recorded from 1440 to 1500, as apparently from Scandinavian, comparing Old Norse duna (“to thunder”).[9] Hoad, Ayto and the Shorter Oxford take the noun as a shortening of the obsolete dunkirk, a privateer, named after the French port of Dunkirk,[7][1][11] and Ayto explains that the privateers' air of piracy was transferred to a creditor who kept pressing for his money.[1] The oldest explanation, from 1708, names one Joe Dun, a bailiff of Lincoln, whom creditors would send to arrest a debtor;[9][6] Etymonline makes him a London bailiff, and Klein accepts the story.[5][4] Weekley notes a letter of about 1488 that suggests a stock name like John Doe,[10] and Johnson derived the verb from a Saxon word for clamouring.[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

To press a debtor for payment: before 1626, in the works of Francis Bacon,[6][10] about 1626 in Merriam-Webster.[2] The OED's first record of the verb is from about 1648, and of the noun, a creditor or debt collector, from 1628, in Earle's Micro-cosmography.[9]

Semantic evolution

Blount still treated the verb as a new word in 1656.[9] From 1659 it was used more widely for pestering someone with something unwelcome, from 1674 for wearying someone's ears with noise or chatter, and since 1775 for driving an idea into someone's head by repetition, uses that overlap with din.[9] The noun came to mean the demand itself, a dunning letter, from 1673.[9] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as "a clamorous, importunate, troublesome creditor".[12] In English dialect, to ride the dun horse was to dun a creditor.[13]

Timeline

  • 1626 – to press a debtor for payment.[6][10][2]
  • 1628 – noun, a creditor or debt collector who presses for payment.[9][2]
  • 1659 – to pester or plague someone.[9]
  • 1673 – noun, a demand for payment of a debt.[9]
  • 1674 – to weary someone's ears with noise or talk.[9]
  • 1775 – to drive an idea into someone's mind by repetition.[9]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To make repeated, insistent demands on someone, especially a debtor, for payment: The landlord dunned his tenants every week for the rent.[9][2][11][14]
  2. To pester or plague someone constantly.[9][2][11]

Noun

  1. A creditor who presses for payment, or an agent hired to collect a debt.[9][14][11]
  2. A demand for payment, especially a written one.[9][14][2]

Word family

  • dunner

References

  1. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  3. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b c Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c d e f Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ a b c d Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  13. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  14. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  15. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House