Dung

How to spell dung

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dung

What does dung mean?

1. nounThe solid waste matter of animals, often used to fertilise soil.

Dung in a sentence

• The farmer spread dung across the field to enrich the soil.

• A heavy smell of dung hung over the cattle yard.

Where does dung come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Dung comes straight from the Old English word 'dung', which meant manure or animal excrement and is one of the oldest farming words in English. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with close relatives such as the Old High German 'tunga' and the modern German 'Dung', all tied to the keeping and fertilising of land. An intriguing older sense connects the word to a covered underground room used for storing or working textiles, possibly because such pits were heated with manure; this gave German 'Dung' an early link to a warm sheltered space. By the medieval period the plain modern meaning, the waste matter that farmers spread to enrich soil, was firmly settled. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, and its short, blunt shape is exactly why it gives writers almost no trouble.

How the word is built

• dung (single Old English root; no prefix or suffix)