spinney

See also: Spinney

English

Alternative forms

• spinny

Etymology

From Middle English spenné, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle French espinoye (“thorny thicket”), espinaye, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin spīnētum (“thorny thicket”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin spīna (“thorn”).

Noun

spinney (plural spinneys)

1. (UK) A small copse or wood, especially one planted as a shelter for game birds.
   • 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Lisson Grove Mystery‎^[1]:

     “H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what [...] will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth. […]”

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     I've never hunted myself, but I understand that half the battle is being able to make noises like some jungle animal with dyspepsia, and I believe that Aunt Dahlia in her prime could lift fellow-members of the Quorn and Pytchley out of their saddles with a single yip, though separated from them by two ploughed fields and a spinney.

   • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, p. 23:

     Freda, the German undermatron, once discovered him sunbathing nude in the spinney.

References

• OED 2nd edition 1989

Anagrams

• Pinneys

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Manx

Noun

spinney m (genitive singular [please provide], plural [please provide])

1. elasticity

Synonyms

• so-lhoobaght

Antonyms

• neuspinney