Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🌫️ Grayish-brown 🟫 A dull color 💰 To demand payment 🐴 A brownish horse 🧑‍💼 A debt collector 🍂 To turn brownish 🧂 To salt meat
to dun

to dun

8.6
To make something a dull brown-grey color
  • verb
  • /dʌn/
: teñir de pardo
  • After the rain, the rocks dun beautifully, adding a muted charm to the landscape.

Examples

  • The once vibrant mural will gradually dun if it is not protected from the harsh sunlight.

  • As they walked along the paths under the trees with bare black branches and one or two leaves, she picked up a leaf and held it out for him to see, dun yellow.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • The artist decided to dun the canvas to achieve a subtle background color.

Synonyms

to brown
vsto dun
38 2.0

To make something a darker color by heat, for example when cooking or in the sun

is a dull blend of warm and neutral tones not a heat caused change
to gray
vsto dun
  • US
3 1.8

To become pale or whitish, often because of age

is a dull blend of warm and neutral tones rather than a pure tone

Antonyms

to brighten
71 2.7

To make a place or thing look more cheerful by adding color

Compounds

dun-colored
1 6.9

A dull greyish-brown color like the fur of some horses

How Dark

to blacken
16 3.4
to darken
38 3.3
to dun
8.6
to stain
46 3.2
to tint
6 3.6

Surface Forms

dun infinitive
dunned past
dunned past participle
dunning present participle
duns third person singular

Etymology

Dun as a verb meaning to make something a dull brown comes from the same old root dunn meaning 'dark' or 'brown', so to dun something is simply to make it darker or browner, like saying 'darken'.