Dunt
contraction, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A stroke; a dull-sounding blow. Scotland
"He was alive to every creak andd dunt, the thinness of the walls, as if the tenement block was a kind of aural panopticon that funnelled every sound to the other residents, let everyone eavesdrop on their business."
- 2 The disease gid or sturdy in sheep. UK, dialectal, uncountable
- 1 To strike; give a blow to; knock. Scotland
"Syne he was the king of France, and fought hard with a whin bush till he had banged it to pieces. After that nothing would content him but he must be a bogle, for he found his head dunting on the stars and his legs were knocking the hills together."
- 1 Pronunciation spelling of don't. Yorkshire, alt-of, contraction, pronunciation-spelling
Example
More examples"He was alive to every creak andd dunt, the thinness of the walls, as if the tenement block was a kind of aural panopticon that funnelled every sound to the other residents, let everyone eavesdrop on their business."
Etymology
From Middle English dunt, dynt, from Old English dynt (“dint, blow, strike, stroke, bruise, stripe, thud, the mark or noise of a blow, a bruise, noise, crash”), from Proto-West Germanic *dunti, from Proto-Germanic *duntiz (“shock, blow”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰen- (“to beat, push”). Cognate with Swedish dialectal dunt (“stroke”). Doublet of dent and dint.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.