Buns

How to spell buns

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce buns

What does buns mean?

1. nounSmall, round baked rolls or sweet cakes, often served with a meal or at tea.

Buns in a sentence

• The bakery sells warm buns fresh from the oven every morning.

• She sliced the buns and filled them with cheese for the picnic.

Where does buns come from?

Language of origin: French

The singular 'bun' appears in English from the late 1300s, but its ultimate source is genuinely murky and much debated. One popular suggestion links it to the Old French 'buignete', a small fritter or swelling, itself related to 'bugne' meaning a lump or bump, which would tie the word to the rounded shape of the little cake. Others connect it to a Middle English sense of a swelling or boss, and a few have proposed a Celtic origin, though none of these can be proved. The spelling has stayed reassuringly plain throughout, just three letters plus the plural -s, so the only real trap is remembering that the plural simply adds -s with no change to the single n. Over time the word picked up extra uses, including the coiled knot of hair and, informally, the buttocks, all of them drawing on that same idea of a small rounded shape.

How the word is built

• bun (small round loaf or cake)
• -s (plural suffix)