Word.ws English Dictionary

dung

/ˈdʌŋ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Midlands/dʊŋ/

dung noun: manure; animal excrement. Also the past participle of ding.

Noun

dung (countable and uncountable, plural dungs)

  1. (uncountable) Manure; animal excrement.
    • Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole, the wall-newt, and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool[…]c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Malachi 2:3
  2. (countable) A type of manure, as from a particular species or type of animal.
  3. (UK, countable, obsolete, slang) A tailor's employee, usually one who is paid by the piece rather than by the day.

Verb (1)

dung (third-person singular simple present dungs, present participle dunging, simple past and past participle dunged)

  1. (transitive) To fertilize with dung.
    • a cart he found, That carry'd compost forth to dung the ground1700, [John] Dryden, “The Cock and the Fox: Or, The Tale of the Nun’s Priest, from Chaucer”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
    • She had been dunging the roses and was fairly covered in muck.1993, Henry Leach, Endure No Makeshifts: Some Naval Recollections
  2. (transitive, calico printing) To immerse or steep, as calico, in a bath of hot water containing cow dung, done to remove the superfluous mordant.
  3. (intransitive) To release dung: to defecate.
    • […] for hungry birds have devoured ſeeds, and having moiſtened and warmed them in their bellies, a little after have dunged in the forky twiſtes of Trees, and together with their dung excluded the ſeed whole which erſt they had ſwallowed: and ſometimes it brings forth there where they dung it, […]1669, John Baptiſta Porta, chapter V, in Natural Magick, The Third Book Of Natural Magick: […] , page 68
    Synonyms:
    defecate

Verb (2)

dung (third-person singular simple present dungs, present participle dunging, simple past and past participle dunged)

  1. (colloquial) To discard (especially rubbish); to chuck out.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Dung

  1. A female given name from Vietnamese.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Dung

  1. A male given name from Vietnamese.

Also used as

dung is also the past participle of ding.

dung is also the alternative spelling of dong.

dung meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu and Malayalam

dung in Hindi

manure
गोबर gobar, मल mal, लीद līd, विष्ठा viṣṭhā, गू gū, गूह gūh

dung in Urdu

manure
کھاد khād

dung in Telugu

manure
ముటము muṭamu

dung in Malayalam

manure
ചാണകം cāṇakaṁ
More languagesFewer languages
dung in Gujarati
પોદળો podaḷo, છાણ chāṇ
dung in Assamese
গোবৰ gübor, গু gu
dung in Arabic
رَوْث rawṯ
dung in Thai
มูล muun, ขี้ kîi
dung in Vietnamese
phân, phân chuồng
dung in Myanmar
ချေး hkye:, မြေဩဇာ mreau:ja

Examples of dung in a sentence

  • The scientist could read the dinosaur dung to see what it had eaten. He was an expert in scatological studies.
  • The dung beetle had lamellate antennae.
  • A lioness on the prowl made for a tense dung safari.

All 36 example sentences with dung

Synonyms of dung

Forms of dung

Noun
pluraldungs
Verb
third-person singular presentdungs
present participledunging
past participledunged
pastdunged
Proper noun
alternative formDzung
alternative formYung

Plural of dung: dungs

Origin of dung

From Middle English dung, dunge, donge, from Old English dung (“dung; excrement; manure”), from Proto-West Germanic *dungu, from Proto-Germanic *dungō (“dung”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰengʰ- (“to cover”). Superseded non-native Middle English fen (“dung, excrement, filth”), from Old French fien, fiente (“dung, manure”).

See ding

unknown

Words formed from dung

Phrases with dung

Words that rhyme with dung

25 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dung

What does dung mean?
Dung means manure; animal excrement.
What is dung in Hindi?
Dung in Hindi is गोबर (gobar), मल (mal), लीद (līd). See Dung meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is dung?
Dung can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dung?
Dung is pronounced /ˈdʌŋ/.
What is the plural of dung?
The plural of dung is dungs.

Words near dung in the dictionary

  1. Dunfermline
  2. dunfish
  3. Dunford
  4. Dunford Bridge
  5. Dunfords
  6. dung
  7. dung beetle
  8. dung beetles
  9. dung flies
  10. dung fly
  11. dung fork

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dung (page history and authors); Dung (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-dung.wav, En-us-dung.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dung.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dung. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.