Warren
Greg from Thompsonville, Michigan, encountered
the word warren a couple of times in
the last month. The first instance occurred in an email from a friend who had
visited Nepal. He wrote, “Kathmandu was
a loud and busy tourist city . . . a warren of hotels, shops and restaurants.”
The second instance came up in a book by Laura
Hillenbrand, Unbroken
– A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption: “Louie curled up under paper sheets. There
were dozens of men in cells near him, but no one made a sound. Phil was in a
cell far down the hall, and for the first time in months, Louie wasn’t near
him. In this warren of captive men, he was alone.”
Originally, warren was
an Anglo-Norman word for a game park. That was in 1377. It seems to have been
derived from a Germanic verb that meant to guard or protect.
About a century later,
it was applied specifically to a piece of land devoted to raising rabbits –
hence, a rabbit-warren. By 1607, it was a collection or assemblage of small
animals of any species.
By the middle of the 17th
century, it had made the leap to a building or settlement that was like a
rabbit-warren, but inhabited by humans who were poor. It was also applied to
office or living space characterized by many passages and small rooms.
Listen to Mike’s program in real
time every Tuesday morning, 9:10 - 10:00 a.m. EST, by going to wtcmradio.com
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also find about a month’s worth of podcasts there under The Ron Jolly Show.
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