Hegg

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A dense row of shrubs or bushes planted along a boundary ; to fence in or enclose an area by planting such a barrier
2. A thick line of bushes or small trees forming a boundary around a field ; to surround a piece of land with a barrier of growing shrubs
3. An archaic term for a boundary formed by closely growing shrubs ; to close off or wall in a plot by planting bushes around it

Etymology: In Scots and northern English dialect, "hegg" names the sloe, the small dark fruit of the blackthorn. The word comes from Old Norse "heggr," which meant the bird cherry tree, a close relative of the blackthorn in the rose family. Old Norse speakers settled much of northern Britain, so Norse vocabulary for local plants and trees passed into the dialects of those regions, where it was applied to a nearby wild fruit. The Norse word survives in modern Norwegian, where "heggr" still refers to the bird cherry. Its exact path into Scots and northern English is uncertain, but the shared name for a dark wild fruit and the shared Scandinavian root show how closely the two plants were linked in the speakers' minds.