A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1190 entries
dun
Dun is a dull grayish brown, and it is one of the oldest color words in English. It is used most often of horses, where a dun is a sandy tan with a dark stripe down the spine and often bars on the legs. In fly fishing the word names a stage rather than a shade; a dun is a mayfly that has just come off the water and has not yet made its final molt, with dull opaque wings held upright. The next molt turns it into a spinner, with clear wings.
Etymology
The color word is Old English and has stayed nearly unchanged since. A second and unrelated dun comes from the Celtic word for a fort or a fortified hill, which is why so many British and Irish place names start with it: Dundee, Dunbar, Downpatrick, and, by way of Scotland, Dunedin in New Zealand. That same Celtic root gave English the word down for a bare rolling hill, as in the South Downs, which is why English has a word for a high place that also means the opposite direction.
Notes
The dun horse pattern is one of the oldest coat colors there is and shows up in the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet, with the dorsal stripe visible. Fly fishers name their patterns by the stage, so a blue-winged olive dun and a blue-winged olive spinner imitate the same insect an hour or a day apart.