Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (transitive) 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
  2. (transitive) 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)

  1. (dated, transitive) 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

See all 21 meanings of dun

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

  1. Dunnavants
  2. Dunnaway
  3. Dunnaways
  4. Dunne
  5. Dunne-za
  6. dunned
  7. dunnekin
  8. dunnekins
  9. Dunnell
  10. Dunnellon
  11. dunner

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.

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