dung

noun

1. 1

   Manure; animal excrement.

   Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole, the wall-newt, and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool[…]

   Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.

   The labourer at the dung cart is paid at 3d. or 4d. a day; and on one estate, Lullington, scattering dung is paid a 5d. the hundred heaps.

   The farmer whose land the Pratincole had chosen to frequent had such an adversion to birders that he had been thundering up and down all day in a high-powered muck-spreader, splattering them with cow dung!

2. 2

   A type of manure, as from a particular species or type of animal.

3. 3

   obsoleteA tailor's employee, usually one who is paid by the piece rather than by the day.

verb

1. 1

   To fertilize with dung.

   a cart he found, That carry'd compost forth to dung the ground

   She had been dunging the roses and was fairly covered in muck.

2. 2

   To immerse or steep, as calico, in a bath of hot water containing cow dung, done to remove the superfluous mordant.

3. 3

   To release dung: to defecate.

   […] for hungry birds have devoured ſeeds, and having moiſtened and warmed them in their bellies, a little after have dunged in the forky twiſtes of Trees, and together with their dung excluded the ſeed whole which erſt they had ſwallowed: and ſometimes it brings forth there where they dung it, […]

verb

1. 1

   Also a form of dingobsoletepast participle of ding

verb

1. 1

   To discard (especially rubbish); to chuck out.

interjection

1. 1

   Variant of dongAlternative spelling of dong (“sound of a bell”).

Forms

plural

dungs

past tense

dunged

past participle

dunged

present participle

dunging

third person singular

dungs