dunned
dunned is the simple past and past participle of dun.
Meaning of dun
Verb (1)
dun (third-person singular simple present duns, present participle dunning, simple past and past participle dunned)
- To ask or beset a debtor for payment.
- And hath she sent so soon to dun?1768, Jonathan Swift, The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London: C. Bathurst, →OCLC, Miscellanies in Verse, page 309
- To harass by continually repeating e.g. a request.
- Rich bitches who had to be dunned for their milk bills would pay him right now.1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, published 2010, page 107
Verb (2)
dun (third-person singular simple present duns, present participle dunning, simple past and past participle dunned)
- To cure, as codfish, by laying them, after salting, in a pile in a dark place, covered with saltgrass or a similar substance.
- Dun-fish are of a superior quality for the table, and are cured in such a manner as to give them a dun or brownish color. Fish for dunning are caught early in spring, and sometimes February, at the Isle of Shoals.1832, James Thacher, History of Plymouth; from its first settlement in 1620, to the year 1832, Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon, →OCLC, page 317
Words formed from dunned
Questions about dunned
- What is dunned the simple past and past participle of?
- Dunned is the simple past and past participle of dun.
Words near dunned in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dunned (page history and authors); dun (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:
Cite this entry: “dunned.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dunned. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
