fennies

Adjective

fenny (comparative more fenny, superlative most fenny)

1. Characteristic of or resembling a fen (“characteristically alkaline wetland containing peat below the waterline”); marshy, swampy; also, of land: containing a fen or fens.
   • [I]nnumerable popingayes of ſundry kindes are found chattering in the groues of thoſe fenny places.1555, Peter Martyr of Angleria [i.e., Peter Martyr d’Anghiera], “The Nynth Booke of the Seconde Decade, of the Supposed Continent”, in Rycharde Eden [i.e., Richard Eden], transl., The Decades of the...

   Synonyms:

   boggy, fenlike, fennish, quaggy, uliginous, boggish, marish, marshy, miry, moorish

2. Now chiefly of plants: growing or living in a fen.
   • A fenny gooſe, even as her fleſhe is blacker, ſtoorer, unholſomer, ſo is her feather, for the ſame cauſe, courſer, ſtoorer, and rougher, and therefore I have heard very good fletchers ſay, that the ſecond fether in ſome place is better than the pinion in other ſome.1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge […], London: […] Edouardi Whytchurch, →OCLC
3. (also, figuratively, obsolete) Muddy; hence, dirty, filthy.
   • Lord vvhat a nothing is this little Span, / VVe call a Man! / VVhat fenny traſh maintaines the ſmooth'ring fires / Of his desires!1635, Fra[ncis] Quarles, “Canto XIV. Pro[verbs] XXIV. XVI.”, in Emblemes, London: […] G[eorge] M[iller] and sold at at Iohn Marriots shope […], →OCLC, book II, stanza 4, page 118

See all 4 meanings of fenny

Noun

fennie (plural fennies)

1. (colloquial) A fenestration in the leaf of a plant, such as Monstera.