Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A member of a group of Central Asian nomadic pastoralist peoples who invaded Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries AD and were defeated in 455.
  • noun A barbarous or destructive person.
  • noun Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a German, especially a German soldier in World War I.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A member of an ancient Asiatic race of warlike nomads, probably of the Mongolian or Tatar stock, first appearing prominently in European history about a. d. 375.
  • noun A Hungarian.
  • noun An abbreviation of Hungary.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One of a warlike nomadic people of Northern Asia who, in the 5th century, under Atilla, invaded and conquered a great part of Europe.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A member of a nomadic tribe, the Huns, most likely of Turkic origin, which invaded Europe in the fourth century from Central Asia.
  • noun figuratively a vandal, a barbarian, an uncivilized destructive person
  • noun slang, derogatory, UK A German (popular in the media since World War I)
  • noun slang, derogatory, UK, Ireland A Protestant.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun offensive term for a person of German descent
  • noun a member of a nomadic people who invaded Europe in the 4th century

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Late Latin Hunnī, the Huns, from Turki Hunyü.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin Hunnus, apparently ultimately from Turkic Hun-yü, the name of a tribe (they were known in China as (Hsiungnu)).

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