Fens

[fenz] Origin

noun

Also called Fenland. a marshy lowland region in E England, S of the Wash: partly drained and channeled since the 17th century.

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Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

low land covered wholly or partially with water; boggy land; a marsh.

the Fens, a marshy region W and S of The Wash, in E England.

Origin:
before 900; Middle English, Old English; cognate with Old Norse fen quagmire, Gothic fani mud, Dutch ven, German Fenn fen, bog

noun, plural fen.

an aluminum coin and monetary unit of the People's Republic of China, the hundredth part of a yuan or the tenth part of a jiao.

Origin:
1905–10; < Chinese fēn

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Collins

World English Dictionary

Fens (fɛnz)

—*pl n*
	the Fens a flat low-lying area of E England, west and south of the Wash: consisted of marshes until reclaimed in the 17th to 19th centuries

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

fen

O.E. fen, fenn "marsh, dirt, mud," from P.Gmc. *fanja- (cf. O.Fris. fenne, Du. veen, Ger. Fenn "marsh," Goth. fani "mud"); probably cognate with Gaul. anam "water," Skt. pankah "bog, marsh, mud," O.Prus. pannean "swampland." It., Sp. fango, O.Fr. fanc, Fr. fange "mud" are loan-words from Gmc. The native

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L. word was limus or lutum.

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Matching Quote

"In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—mallard—thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day."

-Henry David Thoreau