Fun means enjoyable and light-hearted. A fun evening, that was fun, fun and games.
Its use as an adjective is recent and was resisted for decades, which is why funner and funnest still sound wrong to many people. It began as a noun and before that as a verb meaning to trick — the word once meant to make a fool of somebody.
1adjectivefunEnjoyable and light-hearted.~67%
“We had a really fun day at the beach building sandcastles.”
2nounenjoymentEnjoyment and amusement.~33%
“We had so much fun at the beach that we didn't want to go home.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
fun is enjoyment.
From Middle English fonne, a fool, or fonnen, to make a fool of. The sense of enjoyment came later.
Middle English
fonne
English, today
fun
Built from
From Middle English fonne, fon (“foolish, simple, silly”) or fonnen (“make a fool of”), from Middle English fonne (“a fool, dupe”), probably of gmq - origin, related to Swedish fånig (“foolish”), Swedish fåne (“a fool”), from Old Norse fáni (“vain person, swaggerer”), but of unknown ultimate origin. Perhaps related to or influenced by fjäll (“rock, cliff, mountain”). Compare also English fumble, Norwegian Nynorsk fomme (“clumsy fool”). Compare also Norwegian fomme, fume (“a fool”). More at fon, fond. As a noun, fun is recorded from 1700, with a meaning “a cheat, trick, hoax”, from a verb fun meaning “to cheat, trick” (1680s). The meaning “diversion, amusement” dates to the 1720s. The older meaning is preserved in the phrase to make fun of (1737) and in usage of the adjective funny. The use of fun as adjective is newest and is due to reanalysis of the noun; this was incipient in the mid-19th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA