Noun: dungeon
| Singular | dungeon |
| Plural | dungeons |
Sample Sentences
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Year after year he lay patiently in a dungeon. [1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:]
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They could still hear him for some time shouting out things about having the law of them while being bounced down to the deepest dungeon of the castle. [1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 84:]
Nouns inflected like dungeon
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English dongeoun (“keep of a castle; dungeon; abyss, cave, den; whirlpool”), from Anglo-Norman donjun (“keep of a castle; keep used as a prison; dungeon”) and continental Old French donjon (“keep of a castle”), from Vulgar Latin *dominiōnem, seemingly derived from Latin dominus (“master, lord”) perhaps via some figurative sense like “dominant building”. Doublet of donjon. The sense of “prison (associated with a castle)”, first attested in Anglo-Norman (13th c.) and apparently never in continental Old French, likely developed in combination with Old English dung (“underground prison cell”), whence Middle English donge (“pit, abyss”, senses that are also attested for Middle English dongeoun).
2. The game term has been popularized by Dungeons & Dragons. See: Middle English Nouns '
dongeoun', Latin Nouns '
dominus', Old English Nouns '
dung'.