Hun
/hʌn
/noun
1A member of a warlike Asiatic nomadic people who invaded and ravaged Europe in the 4th-5th centuries.In the fourth century, the Huns, a nomadic people from central Asia, began attacking the German tribes....
- In the first two decades of the 5th century, the Huns arrived in central Europe and subjugated many Germanic peoples.
- But no one really knows what kind of language Hunnic was, which is odd considering what a big splash Attila and the Huns made across Asia and Europe in the 5th century AD.
2 informal, derogatory A German (especially during the First and Second World Wars).
2.1 (the Hun) Germans collectively: millions of boys were eager to go and fight the Hun...
- I remember when I was fighting the Hun in North Africa, and me and the boys used to sit around and compare notes from home.
- Patton was quick to volunteer for an unofficial expeditionary force to fight the Hun's skeletal legions.
- They have put on uniforms and been drilled into rude shape to fight the Hun in World War I.
Derivatives
Hunnish
/ adjective ...- Like his distant ancestor and name-sake, the legendary Hunnish king, nicknamed ‘The Scourge of God’ by his contemporaries, Attila was a bit of a dare-devil.
- As well as being flogged for stupidity and persecuted for his Hunnish origins, he was flung down the kipper hole at the back of the school dining-room, along with meal scraps intended for pigs.
- They were discussing safe political subjects: the Hunnish threat on the Danube frontier; the Vandal threat to the wheat-ships from Egypt; the Visigothic threat to the Roman towns in Gaul.
Origin
Old English Hūne, Hūnas (plural), from late Latin Hunni, from Greek Hounnoi, of Middle Iranian origin.