Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Low, flat, swampy land; a bog or marsh.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Low land covered wholly or partially with water, but producing sedge, coarse grasses, or other aquatic plants; boggy land; a bog; a marsh: as, the bogs in Ireland, or the fens in Lincolnshire, Kent, and Cambridgeshire, England.
- n. Mud; mire.
- n. A disease affecting hops, caused by a quick-growing moss or mold. Imp. Dict. Synonyms Swamp, etc. See
marsh . - To forbid: same as fend : used in this form by boys in marbles and other games, in an exclamatory way, to check or block, according to understood rules, some move of an opposing player. It occurs in such phrases as “fen roundings!”— that is, I forbid moving around in a circle (as a player might otherwise do in order to avoid some obstruction), “fen dubs!”— that is, I forbid doubles (said when a player knocks two marbles out of the ring, one of which must then be put back). The phrase is properly used only by the opposing player, but through ignorance of its real meaning it may be used also by the player who knocks the marbles out, who thereby cuts off the opponent's right to object, and pockets both marbles.
- n. A section in the work of the Arabic physician Avicenna, called the Canon.
Wiktionary
- n. A type of wetland fed by ground water and runoff, containing peat below the waterline.
- n. A plural form of fan used by enthusiasts of science fiction, fantasy, and anime, partly from whimsy and partly to distinguish themselves from fans of sport, etc.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Low land overflowed, or covered wholly or partially with water, but producing sedge, coarse grasses, or other aquatic plants; boggy land; moor; marsh.
WordNet 3.0
- n. low-lying wet land with grassy vegetation; usually is a transition zone between land and water
- n. 100 fen equal 1 yuan in China
Etymologies
- From fan, by analogy with men as the plural of man (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old English fenn. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This year it was awarded to Åcon, a Finnish convention that strives to bring together fen from the Nordic countries.”
“The studies aren't anywhere near conclusive - they describe only 24 long-term fen-phen users, and the Food and Drug Administration has found nine others.”
“There are tracts of wetland all over Europe, all over the world, but they are not named fens, fen is an English word, it will not migrate.”
“The mechanism is similar to the one used by a component of the recalled fen-phen drug combination, but with an important difference.”
The Wall Street Journal: Regulators to Review New Drugs to Curb Appetite
“The so-called fen-phen drug combination manufactured by Wyeth, now owned by Pfizer Inc., was recalled in the 1990s after one of the medication's components was linked to heart-valve damage.”
The Wall Street Journal: Regulators to Review New Drugs to Curb Appetite
“The FDA's meetings this week come exactly 13 years after the withdrawal of two diet drugs that were part of the famous combination known as fen-phen.”
“The loudest group of Chinese youth is known as fen qing, or "angry youth.”
Julian Baird Gewirtz: What Did Chinese Youth Think of Hillary Clinton's Visit?
“In one legendary case against a pharmaceutical company that sold the diet pill Pondimin (part of the weight-loss combination known as fen-phen, which was later banned), a Jefferson County jury awarded $1 billion to the family of a woman who had taken the drug.”
“Another series of lawsuits that show how hard it is to pin down litigation costs relates to Wyeth's obesity drugs that were used in a popular diet-drug cocktail known as fen-phen.”
The Wall Street Journal: Drug Makers Protest Plan on Legal Costs
“T is called the fen of Agnefit, O King," replied the saga-man, pointing toward where it lay.”
Historic Boys Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fen’.
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3-letter Scrabble Words
aah, aal, aas, aba, abo, abs, aby, ace, act, add, ado, ads and 995 more...
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crosswords
yen, emend, fete, gest, orlop, latria, ensilage, aria, wend, ilk, fen, espy and 9 more...
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Remember Not To Forget
Sephardic, Umwelt, amphiboly, untrammeled, sequela, pandiculation, tensegrity, syncretism, pugilism, shemagh, disquisition, perspicacity and 65 more...
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erinnbatykefer's Words
ewer, lace, grenadine, wick, haruspex, augur, distal, proximal, supine, labyrinthine, rivers, monongahela and 176 more...
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Unusual words for Words With Friends
A list of words that WWF recognizes as valid - most are unusual words; some are simply high-scoring.
botel, slipe, jeu, chub, chubs, cote, mure, tittle, dev, loo, hoke, helo and 357 more...
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Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
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Junk
walrus, fascination, broadway, fickle, downturn, bridge, gargle, rotunda, mesh, fab, shortlife, strumming and 304 more...
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Eocene (Eosin) (Eoscene) (Eoseen) Eng...
Dawn Words in English
swefnum, swefna, secgan, goste, wealhstod, wald-swathu, hearpan, hwaet, leothcraeft, beorhtost, wyrd, dustsceawung and 131 more...
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the earth
Planetary chaos: terrain, landscape and geology excluding rocks. (See "the geologist" list for the latter.)
butte, karst, caldera, mesa, laccolith, cwm, crater, alp, precipice, sierra, badlands, prairie and 122 more...
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Cold Comfort Farm
From the novel by Stella Gibbons
tyro, bustle, locust years, lambency, mere, berg, fen, bilious, cataclysm, flapdoodle, vulgar, serener and 98 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (F)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
faery, fairy cross, fairy ring, falcon, fare-thee-well, farewell-summer, farthing, faun, fawn, felicitous, felicity, fencing and 109 more...
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miltonic
liberty, froth-becurlèd, host, huge-bellied, aghast, rills, gladsom, wrathfull, ordain, thunder-clasping, ruddy, warble and 264 more...
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ElRojo
R. Peter Jackson's list
cantillation, jackstaff, pullulate, whoremonger, colloquy, batman, anathema, idiosyncratic, facilitation, sympathy, empathy, satrap and 135 more...
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Landscape
riparian, littoral, talus, fen, ambit, savanna, remnant prairie, shortgrass prairie, tallgrass prairie, marsh, swamp, marshy and 199 more...
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Hedgepiglet
Words for things both tangible and nonanthropic
rorqual, vellus, wrasse, rainbow bee-eater, tinkershire, lemonquat, boomslang, tufted vetch, cubeb, nipplefruit, madapple, wad and 447 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fen.

Casey "Its silvery blackness was all around them now, as if the whole world had turned into a flat Norfolk fen at dawn." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. Jan 21, 2011
mialuthien "Fen" – 100 fen equal 1 yuan in China (see above definition) – ahahaha. I've only ever seen fen used as a plural form of the word fan, that's why it caught me completely by surprise. But I'm all *enlightened* now. Jul 14, 2008
ofravens Plath citations: see note at austere. Mar 31, 2008