Hun
/hʌn/noun
A member of a nomadic people who entered Europe in the late Roman period, especially under Attila.
Did you know?In medieval and later European imagination, the Huns were so feared that their name became a shorthand for ruthless devastation, even when writers were using it more as legend than as precise history.
Etymological Timeline
Late Antiquity
Latin
Hunni
“The Huns, the steppe people known to Roman writers.”
4th–5th Century
Greek
Ounnoi
“Greek form referring to the Huns.”
Early Germanic
Proto-Germanic
*Hunōz
“A name adopted into Germanic speech for the Huns.”
Old English
Old English
Hūnas
“The Huns, remembered as a foreign and fearsome people.”
Modern English
English
Hun
“A member of the Huns; also used figuratively for a destructive or barbaric person.”