Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A hill or ridge of wind-blown sand.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An ancient fort with a hemispherical or conical roof.
  • noun A mound, ridge, or hill of loose sand, heaped up by the wind on the sea-coast, or rarely on the shore of a large lake, as on Lake Superior.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A low hill of drifting sand usually formed on the coats, but often carried far inland by the prevailing winds.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun geomorphology A ridge or hill of sand piled up by the wind.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a ridge of sand created by the wind; found in deserts or near lakes and oceans

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Old French, from Middle Dutch dūne; see dheuə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Cognate with Old and Modern French dune, Middle Dutch dūne, Dutch duin, compare English down.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Philatelic term for the Arab microstates that around 1970 flooded the children's stamp-collecting market with brightly coloured gummed labels purporting to be postage stamps.

    January 5, 2009

  • Ha ha! I remember those. Bloody Sharjah and Fujairah!

    January 6, 2009