Fen

Word of the Day for Saturday, June 22, 2013

Fen \fen\, noun:

1. low land covered wholly or partially with water; boggy land; a marsh.
2. the Fens, a marshy region W and S of The Wash, in E England.

It was already very ancient; its foundation had been laid by Roman soldiery; in the lapse of ages much of it had sunk, and every here and there, for a few hundred yards, it lay submerged below the stagnant waters of the fen.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, 1888

We could do nothing but get drenched while the earth spat mud around us and the fen steamed and boiled.
-- Jeremy Page, Salt, 2007

Fen came from the Old English term fenn, and ultimately comes from the Proto-Indo-European root pen- meaning "swamp."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com