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coven

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cov⋅en

  [kuhv-uhn, koh-vuhn]
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–noun
an assembly of witches, esp. a group of thirteen.
Origin:
1500–10 for sense “assembly”; 1655–65 for current sense; var. of obs. covent assembly, religious group, convent
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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cov·en   (kŭv'ən, kō'vən)   
n.  An assembly of 13 witches.

[Perhaps from Middle English covent, assembly, convent; see convent.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

coven 
"a gathering of witches," 1662, earlier (c.1500) a variant of covent, cuvent early forms of convent (q.v.). Association with witches arose in Scotland, but not popularized until Sir Walter Scott used it in this sense in "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830).
"Ther vold meit bot sometymes a Coven .... Ther is threttein persones in ilk Coeven." [Crim. Trials Scot. III 606, 1662]
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Encyclopedia

coven

basic group in which witches are said to gather. One of the chief proponents of the theory of a coven was the English Egyptologist Margaret Murray in her work The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921). According to her a coven consists of 12 witches and a devil as leader. The number is generally taken as a parody of Christ and his 12 disciples. (An alternate theory, stressing the Murray view of a pre-Christian tradition of witches, explains 13 as the maximum number of dancers that can be accommodated in a nine-foot circle.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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