[f. STUN v.]
1. The act of stunning or dazing; a stunning effect; the condition of being stunned.
1727. Thomson, Summer, 488 [586]. Till the stun [later sound] Of a near fall of water every sense Wakes.
a. 1734. North, Life Ld. Kpr. Guilford (1742), 159. The People return’d their joyful Sense of the King’s Safety … by numerous Addresses from all parts of the Kingdom; which gave such a Stun to the rebellious Party … that little Sign of any Resurrection to Action appear’d in them.
1804. Naval Chron., XII. 397. He fainted from the stun.
1836. Ruskin, Ess. Lit., Wks. 1903, I. 361. In the first stun of our astonishment.
1887. Poor Nellie (1888), 189. Before poor Adela could recover from the stun of a great astonishment.
2. A flaw on the surface of a piece of stone. Cf. STUN v. 5.
1850. Holtzapffel, Turning, III. 1198. The last marks to be eradicated in the smoothing are generally those called stuns, made in sawing the marble by coarse particles of sand getting between the side of the saw blade and the saw kerf.
