nūn

Noun (1)

nun (plural nuns)

1. A member of a Christian religious community of women who live by certain vows and usually wear a habit, (Roman Catholicism, specifically) those living together in a cloister.
   • Thus, when the nuns came to the mission and we saw that instead of murmuring soft blessings and gliding seraphically over the grass in diaphanous habits, they wore smart blouses and skirts and walked, laughed and talked in low twanging tones very much like our own American missionaries did, we were...1988, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, Faber & Faber Limited (2021), page 258

   Synonyms:

   sister, moniale, sistren, cloistress

   Antonyms:

   brother, friar, monk, frater

2. (broadly) A member of a similar female community in other confessions.
   • a Buddhist nun
3. (UK, archaic, slang) A prostitute.
   • Why laſt night, as Colonel Kill'em, Sir William Weezy, Lord Frederick Foretop, and I were careleſsly ſliding the Ranelagh round, picking our teeth, after a damn'd muzzy dinner at Boodle's, who ſhould trip by but an abbeſs, well known about town, with a ſmart little nun in her ſuite.1770, Samuel Foote, The Lame Lover, a Comedy in Three Acts. […], London: […] Paul Vaillant; and sold by P[eter] Elmsly […]; and Robinson and Roberts, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 12

   Synonyms:

   abandons, alley cat, almah, bangtail, Bankside lady, bargirl, bat, beotch, blouze, blowen

4. A kind of pigeon with the feathers on its head like the hood of a nun.

Noun (2)

nun (plural nuns)

1. The fourteenth letter of many Semitic alphabets or abjads (Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and others).

See all 7 meanings of nun