Etymograph

English

fenny

Fenny comes from Middle English fenny ‘marshy, muddy’, and goes back to Old English fenniġ ‘dirty’.

  1. Old Englishc. 450–1150fenniġ‘dirty’
  2. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500fenny‘marshy, muddy’
  3. Englishearliest quotation 1545same form

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Earlier history not traced here.

Lineage

  1. Old Englishc. 450–1150fenniġ‘dirty’
  2. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500fenny‘marshy, muddy’
  3. Englishearliest quotation 1545same form

Earliest quotation: 1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus: “A fenny gooſe, even as her fleſhe is blacker,…”

Formed from fen + -y

Proto-Indo-European *pen- ‘bog, mire’

Proto-Germanic *fanją ‘fen, marsh, swamp’

Proto-West Germanic *fani

Old English fenn

Middle English fen ‘fen, bog, swamp’

English fen

The story

The English word is analysable as fen + -y (suffix meaning ‘having the quality of’ forming adjectives).

Every English word from Old English fenniġ

Today it means

adj Characteristic of or resembling a fen (“characteristically alkaline wetland containing peat below the waterline”); marshy, swampy; also, of land: containing a fen or fens.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Old English fenniġ / fenny

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