• IPA: /dʌn/

dun (uncountable)

1. A brownish grey colour.

    

• French: brun grisâtre
• Italian: bigio, grigio, grigiastro, grigio brunastro
• Portuguese: pardo
• Russian: серова́то-кори́чневый
• Spanish: pardo

dun (not comparable)

1. Of a brownish grey colour#Noun|colour.
   • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act I, scene v], lines 48–49, page 134 ↗, column 2:

     Come, thick Night, / And pall thee in the dunneſt ſmoake of Hell, / That my keene Knife ſee not the Wound it makes, / Nor Heauen peepe through the Blanket of the darke, / To cry, hold, hold.

   • 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 130”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before Imprinted‎, London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, OCLC 216596634 ↗:

     My Miſtres eyes are nothing like the Sunne, / coral#English|Currall is farre more red, then her lips red, / If ſnow be white, why then her breſts are dun: / If hairs be wire#English|wiers, black wiers grow on her head: [...]

   • 1827, [John Keble], “Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity”, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume II, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], OCLC 1029642537 ↗, page 85 ↗:

     Red o'er the forest glows the setting sun, / The line of yellow light dies fast away / That crown'd the eastern copse, and chill and dun / Falls on the moor the brief November day.

• French: brun gris
• Italian: grigio brunastro
• Portuguese: pardo
• Russian: серова́то-кори́чневый
• Spanish: pardo

dun (plural duns)

1. (countable) A collector of debts.
   • 1933, George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, Ch. 18:

     Melancholy duns came looking for him at all hours.

   • 1970, John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse, New York 2007, p. 102:

     ‘Frank's worried about duns,’ she said as the butler went away.

2. An urgent request or demand of payment.

dun (duns, present participle dunning; past and past participle dunned)

1. (transitive) To ask or beset a debtor for payment.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Folio Society 1973, p. 577:

     Of all he had received from Lady Bellaston, not above five guineas remained and that very morning he had been dunned by a tradesman for twice that sum.

2. (transitive) To harass by continually repeating e.g. a request.
   • 1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin 2010, p. 107:

     Rich bitches who had to be dunned for their milk bills would pay him right now.

• Portuguese: cobrar

dun (plural duns)

1. (countable) A newly hatched, immature mayfly; a mayfly subimago.
2. (countable, angling) A fly made to resemble the mayfly subimago.

• subimago

dun (plural duns)

1. An ancient or medieval fortification; especially a hill-fort in Scotland or Ireland.
2. (archeology) A structure in the Orkney or Shetland islands or in Scotland consisting of a roundhouse surrounded by a circular wall; a broch.

1. (non-standard, informal) Eye dialect spelling of done#English|done: past participle of do#English|do

   Now, ya dun it!

2. (non-standard, informal) Eye dialect spelling of don't#English|don't: contraction of do#English|do + not.

dun (duns, present participle dunning; past and past participle dunned)

1. (transitive, dated) To cure, as codfish, by laying them, after salting, in a pile in a dark place, covered with saltgrass or a similar substance.

dun (plural duns)

1. A mound or small hill.

1. (humorous) Imitating suspenseful music.

1. A river in Wiltshire and Berkshire, England, which flows into the River Kennet.
2. A river in Wiltshire and Hampshire, England, which flows into the River Test.
3. An alternative name for the River Don in Yorkshire, England.
4. A river in Antrim, Northern Ireland, alternatively named the Glendun River.
5. A settlement/and/parish in Angus (OS grid ref NO6659).