Definitions

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

  • noun An almost neutral brownish gray to dull grayish brown.
  • noun A horse of this color.
  • noun A mayfly in its earliest adult stage.
  • noun An fishing fly that imitates such an insect.
  • transitive verb To importune (a debtor) for payment.
  • noun One that duns.
  • noun An importunate demand for payment.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who duns; an importunate creditor, or an agent employed to collect debts.
  • noun A demand for the payment of a debt, especially a written one; a dunning-letter: as, to send one's debtor a dun.
  • To make a loud noise; din.
  • To demand payment of a debt from; press or urge for payment or for fulfilment of an obligation of any kind.
  • noun A hill; a mound; a fortified eminence.
  • To make of a dun or dull-brown color.
  • Especially To cure, as cod, in such a manner as to impart a dun or brown color. See dunfish.
  • To become of a dun color.
  • noun A dun-colored natural or artificial fly used in angling: as, the pale-olive dun, made with a body of hair from the polar bear; goose-dun, with a body of gray goose-pinion; blue dun, with a body of pale mole-fur.
  • Of a color partaking of brown and black; of a dull-brown color; swarthy.
  • Dark; gloomy.
  • noun A familiar name for an old horse or jade: used as a quasi-proper name (like dobbin).

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

  • noun A mound or small hill.
  • adjective Of a dark color; of a color partaking of a brown and black; of a dull brown color; swarthy.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) the hooded crow; -- so called from its color; -- also called hoody, and hoddy.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) the goosander or merganser.
  • verb To ask or beset (e.g., a debtor), for payment; to urge importunately.
  • noun One who duns; a dunner.
  • noun An urgent request or demand of payment.
  • transitive verb To cure, as codfish, in a particular manner, by laying them, after salting, in a pile in a dark place, covered with salt grass or some like substance.

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

  • verb informal Eye dialect spelling of done: simple past tense and past participle of do.
  • phrase Eye dialect spelling of don't.
  • noun countable A newly hatched, immature mayfly.
  • noun uncountable A brownish grey colour.
  • adjective Of a brownish grey colour.
  • noun countable A collector of debts.
  • verb transitive To ask or beset a debtor for payment.
  • verb transitive To harass by continually repeating e.g. a request.
  • noun A valley in the Himalayan foothills, e.g. Dehra Dun.

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

  • verb treat cruelly
  • verb cure by salting
  • verb make a dun color
  • noun horse of a dull brownish grey color
  • adjective of a dull greyish brown to brownish grey color
  • noun a color or pigment varying around a light grey-brown color
  • verb persistently ask for overdue payment

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English dunn, perhaps of Celtic origin.]

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

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See done.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See don’t.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English dun, dunne, from Old English dunn ("dun, dingy brown, bark-colored, brownish black"), from Proto-Germanic *dusnaz (“brown, yellow”), from Proto-Indo-European *dhūw- (“to smoke, raise dust”). Cognate with Old Saxon dun ("brown, dark"), Old High German tusin ("ash-gray, dull brown, pale yellow, dark").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Unknown; perhaps a variant of din.

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Examples

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  • They were eternally besetting, dunning, and tormenting me.

    - Lesage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, tr. Smollett, bk 1 ch. 11

    September 12, 2008