Word.ws English Dictionary

sunburnt

/ˈsʌn.bɝnt/

sunburnt adjective: having a sunburn or dark tan; having been burned by the sun's rays. Also the simple past and past participle of sunburn.

Adjective

sunburnt (comparative more sunburnt, superlative most sunburnt)

  1. Having a sunburn or dark tan; having been burned by the sun's rays.
    • You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary, / Come hither from the furrow and be merry:1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
    • […] I must beg leave to say for my self, that I am as fair as most of my Sex and Country, and very little sun-burnt by my Travels.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the...
  2. Dried out by the sun's rays.
    • The barren Heath, and the Sun-burnt craggy Soil appear with all those Softenings to the Eye, which Distance throws upon a Landscape;1753, Arthur Murphy, The Gray’s-Inn Journal, No. 53, 20 October, 1753, London: P. Vaillant, 1756, Volume 2, p. 191
    • the well-remembered dusty road and sun-burnt fields1842, Charles Dickens, chapter VII, in American Notes for General Circulation. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 267
  3. Subject to the strong heat and/or light of the sun.
    • So my dear Charles, you are at length […] arrived in our little sun-burnt island?1790, Samuel Jackson Pratt, The New Cosmetic: or The Triumph of Beauty, London, act I, page 3
    • […] when distances are obscured by mist […] the foreground assumes all its loveliest hues, the grass and foliage revive into their perfect green, and every sunburnt rock glows into an agate.1856, John Ruskin, chapter 16, in Modern Painters […], volume IV, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part V (Of Mountain Beauty), page 251
  4. Resembling a sunburn in color.
    • The van was painted a sunburnt brown.

Also used as

sunburnt is also the simple past and past participle of sunburn.

sunburnt meaning in Vietnamese

sunburnt in Vietnamese

having a sunburn; having been burned by the sun's rays
cháy nắng

Examples of sunburnt in a sentence

  • He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains […]1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, chapter XII, in The Woodlanders […], volume II, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published...
  • The […] fortress of the Incas stood on a lofty eminence, the steep sides of which […] were cut into terraces, defended by strong walls of stone and sunburnt brick.1847, William H. Prescott, chapter X, in A History of the Conquest of Peru, volume II, page 73:
  • [O]ut on to the bare hillside’s sunburnt grass1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter XIII, in Kim, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 329:
  • Most of it [the island of Mauritius] was high […] so that gusts of fresh winds often blew exuberantly off the sea, and the British could build their villas far above the sunburnt coast.1978, Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Part 3, Chapter 26, p. 536:

Forms of sunburnt

comparativemore sunburnt
superlativemost sunburnt
alternative formsunburned

Origin of sunburnt

From Middle English sunne brente, equivalent to sun + burnt.

Words formed from sunburnt

Questions about sunburnt

What does sunburnt mean?
Sunburnt means having a sunburn or dark tan; having been burned by the sun's rays.
What is sunburnt in Vietnamese?
Sunburnt in Vietnamese is cháy nắng. See Sunburnt meaning in Vietnamese.
How do you use sunburnt in a sentence?
He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains […]
What part of speech is sunburnt?
Sunburnt is an adjective.
How do you pronounce sunburnt?
Sunburnt is pronounced /ˈsʌn.bɝnt/ (US).

Words near sunburnt in the dictionary

  1. sunburn
  2. sunburned
  3. sunburning
  4. sunburnlike
  5. sunburns
  6. sunburnt
  7. sunburntness
  8. sunburst
  9. sunburst chart
  10. sunburst charts
  11. sunburst squash

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sunburnt (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: En-us-sunburnt.oga.

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