Word.ws English Dictionary

ranny

ranny noun: a shrew (the animal).

ranny: a shrew (the animal)
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Noun

ranny (plural rannies)

  1. (East-Anglia, dialectal, obsolete) A shrew (the animal).
    • instead of a caligation or dimness, we conclude a cecity or blindness. Which hath been frequently inferred concerning other Animals, so some affirm the Water-Rat is blind, so Sammonicus and Nicander do call the Mus-Araneus, the shrew or Ranny, blind […]1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, section XVIII

Forms of ranny

pluralrannies

Origin of ranny

From Latin mūsarāneus (“shrew, fieldmouse”).

Words formed from ranny

Questions about ranny

What does ranny mean?
Ranny means a shrew (the animal).
What part of speech is ranny?
Ranny is a noun.
What is the plural of ranny?
The plural of ranny is rannies.

Words near ranny in the dictionary

  1. rannigals
  2. Rannoch
  3. Rannoch Moor
  4. Rannock
  5. ranns
  6. ranny
  7. ranny-gazoo
  8. rannygazoo
  9. ranoid
  10. ranoids
  11. ranolazine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ranny (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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