fen

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛn/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛn

Etymology 1

English Wikipedia has an article on:

fen

Wikipedia

From Middle English fen, fenne, from Old English fenn (“fen; marsh; mud; dirt”), Proto-West Germanic *fani, from Proto-Germanic *fanją, from Proto-Indo-European *pen- (“bog, mire”).

See also West Frisian fean, Dutch veen, German Fenn, Norwegian fen; also Middle Irish en (“water”), enach (“swamp”), Old Prussian pannean (“peat-bog”), Sanskrit पङ्क (paṅka, “marsh, mud, mire, slough”).

Noun

fen (plural fens)

1. A type of wetland fed by ground water and runoff, containing peat below the waterline, characteristically alkaline.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 4:

     Caliban: As wicked dewe, as ere my mother bruſh'd / With Rauens feather from vnwholeſome Fen / Drop on you both : A Southweſt blow on yee, / And bliſter you all ore.

   • 1807, William Wordsworth, "England, 1802," collected in Poems (1807):

     Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

     England hath need of thee: she is a fen

     Of stagnant waters

   • 1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Slave in the Dismal Swamp, from Poems on Slavery:

     In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp / The hunted Negro lay;

   • 1887, “When the Night Wind Howls”, W. S. Gilbert (lyrics), Arthur Sullivan (music):

     As the sob of the breeze/Sweeps over the trees/And the mists lie low on the fen...

   • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:

     He was freezing to death in the flat mud of the Suffolk fens, too proud to go home without a catch.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Etymology 2

English Wikipedia has an article on:

Fen (currency)

Wikipedia

From Chinese 分 (fēn). Doublet of hoon and fan.

Noun

fen (plural fen or fens)

2. A unit of currency in China, one-hundredth of a yuan.
   • 1994, Ronald David Schwartz, “ Symbolic competition”, in Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, published 1996, →ISBN, page 184:

     One poster, which appeared on the Barkhor on 20 May, ridiculed the way neighbourhood committees were recruiting participants: “We paid 30 fen for one stone, but you hire people for 30 yuan for the picnic in the Norbulingka” (“30 fen” — one hundred fen is one yuan — is a joking reference to Chinese accusations that Tibetans were paid 30 fen by splittists for each stone thrown on 1 October 1987).

Translations

Etymology 3

From fan, by analogy with men as the plural of man.

Noun

fen

1. (dated, fandom slang) a plural of fan used by enthusiasts of science fiction, fantasy, and anime, partly from whimsy and partly to distinguish themselves from fans of sport, etc.
   • 1951 May 21, Winthrop Sargeant, “Through the Interstellar Looking Glass”, in Life‎, volume 30, number 21, page 127:

     Sad to relate, some of the European delegates were probably insurgents rather than true fen. […] But the Europeans could be counted on to take the long view, and many of them would probably turn out to be real fen and fenne after all.

   • 2016 September 3, lurkertype, “Worldcon 75 Chair Responds”, in File 770‎, Comments:

     So I’m glad the attached hotel block is entirely reserved for disabled fen! Traveling on mass transit is tiring even when everything’s up to code.

Coordinate terms

• fenne

Derived terms

Etymology 4

Compare fend.

Interjection

fen

1. (obsolete) Used in children's games to prevent or forestall another player's action; a check or bar.

Etymology 5

From Middle English *vene, Kentish variant of *fine, from Old English fyne (“moisture, mold, mildew”), from Proto-Germanic *funiz, *fun- (“moisture, mold”); compare vinew.

Noun

fen (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) A kind of mildew that grows on hops.
   • 1769, The Complete Farmer: Or, a General Dictionary of Husbandry‎, 2nd edition, page 339:

     […] whereby the ſtagnating ſap corrupts, and breeds mouldy fen, which often ſpoils whole tracts of, till then, flouriſhing hop-grounds.

   • 1808, Thomas Potts, The British Farmer's Cyclopaedia or, Complete Agricultural Dictionary‎, Scatcherd and Letterman, page 96:

     Among these are reckoned the wire worm; the flea, and the fly; the fen or mould; the mildew ; and what are usually called fire blasts.

   • 1848, John Marius Wilson, editor, The Rural Cyclopedia‎, volume 2, A. Fullarton, page 698:

     The mould, the fen, or the mouldy-fen, prevails more on hop-grounds which are low, moist, and sheltered, than on such as are high, dry, and open […]

Anagrams

• ENF, nef

Catalan

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Central)
• IPA^(key): (Balearic)
• IPA^(key): (Valencian)

Verb

fen

1. inflection of fendre:
   1. third-person singular present indicative
   2. second-person singular imperative

Chuukese

Adjective

fen

1. holy

Synonyms

• pin

Adverb

fen

1. past tense marker for verbs
2. already

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):
• Rhymes: -ɛn

Etymology 1

Noun

fen m inan

1. fen (unit of currency in China, one-hundredth of a yuan)
   • 1962, Časopis Národního muzea, volume 131, page 165:

     Čínská poštovní správa v roce 1961 vydala ke Dni armády, tj. k 1. srpnu 1961 dvě známky, a to v hodnotách 8 fenů a 10 fenů […]

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Declension

Etymology 2

Noun

fen

1. genitive plural of fena

Further reading

• fen in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu

Dalmatian

Etymology

From Latin fīnitus. Compare Italian fino.

Adjective

fen (feminine faina)

1. fine
2. subtle
3. pure

Faroese

Etymology

From Old Norse fen, from Proto-Germanic *fanją.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /feːn/
• Rhymes: -eːn

Noun

fen n (genitive singular fens, plural fen)

1. bog, quagmire

Declension

Derived terms

• fenbressa
• fendíki
• fenjutur

Friulian

Etymology

From Latin fēnum,from faenum.

Noun

fen m (plural fens)

1. hay

Related terms

• fenoli

Hungarian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: fen
• Rhymes: -ɛn

Etymology 1

From Proto-Ugric *pänV-, from Proto-Finno-Ugric *pänɜ (“grindstone; grind”).

Verb

fen

1. (transitive) to sharpen, to whet, to hone

   Synonyms: köszörül, élesít, élez

2. (dialectal) to rub, to smear

   Synonyms: ken, dörgöl

Conjugation

Derived terms

Etymology 2

Noun

fen (plural fenek)

2. fen (unit of currency in China, one-hundredth of a yuan)

   Holonyms: jüan, zsenminpi

   Meronym: csiao

Declension

References

Further reading

• (to whet): fen in Bárczi, Géza and László Országh. A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára (‘The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language’, abbr.: ÉrtSz.). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959–1962. Fifth ed., 1992: →ISBN

Icelandic

Etymology

From Old Norse fen, from Proto-Germanic *fanją.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛːn/
• Rhymes: -ɛːn

Noun

fen n (genitive singular fens, nominative plural fen)

1. fen, marsh, morass

Declension

Istriot

Etymology

From Latin faenum.

Noun

fen

1. hay

Lombard

Etymology

Akin to Italian fieno, from Latin fenum.

Noun

fen

1. hay

Mandarin

Romanization

fen

1. Nonstandard spelling of fēn.
2. Nonstandard spelling of fén.
3. Nonstandard spelling of fěn.
4. Nonstandard spelling of fèn.

Usage notes

• Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.

Middle English

Alternative forms

• fenne, ven

Etymology

From Old English fenn; from Proto-West Germanic *fani, from Proto-Germanic *fanją. The "dung" sense is influenced by Old French fien.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛn/

Noun

fen (plural fennes)

1. fen, bog, swamp
2. dirt, muddiness
3. dung, feces
4. (rare) rubbish, refuse
5. (rare) quagmire, lure

Declension

Descendants

• English: fen
• Scots: fen
• Yola: ven

References

• “fen, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
• “fen, n.(2).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Old Norse

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *fanją.

Noun

fen n (genitive fens, plural fen)

1. bog, quagmire

   mýrar ok fen

   (please add an English translation of this usage example)

Declension

References

• “fen”, in Geir T. Zoëga (1910) A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press

Polish

Polish Wikipedia has an article on:

fen

Wikipedia ^pl

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛn/
• Rhymes: -ɛn
• Syllabification: fen

Etymology 1

Borrowed from German Föhn, from Old High German phonno, from Vulgar Latin *faōnius, from Latin Favōnius.

Noun

fen m inan

1. (meteorology) foehn (warm dry wind blowing down the northern sides of the Alps)
2. (meteorology) foehn (any similar wind)

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Chinese 分.

Noun

fen m inan

1. fen (unit of Chinese currency)

Declension

Derived terms

Further reading

• fen in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Serbo-Croatian

Etymology

Borrowed from German Föhn.

Noun

fȇn m (Cyrillic spelling фе̑н)

1. hair dryer
2. (meteorology) foehn

Declension

Swedish

Noun

fen

1. definite singular of fe

Turkish

Etymology

From Ottoman Turkish فن (fen, “kind, variety; art, science”), from Arabic فَنّ (fann), ultimately from Persian پند (pand, “knack, trick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fæn/

Noun

fen (definite accusative fenni, plural fenler or (archaic) fünun)

1. (archaic) technic

   Synonym: fen

2. (dated) science

   Synonym: bilim

Declension

Synonyms

• ilim
• bilim

Related terms

• fennî (“scientific, technical”)
• darülfünun (“university”)

References

• Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “fen”, in Nişanyan Sözlük
• Redhouse, James W. (1890) “فن”, in A Turkish and English Lexicon‎, Constantinople: A. H. Boyajian, page 1397