cony: [13] The rabbit was not originally native to northern Europe, so there is no Germanic word for it. Cony was introduced into English (originally in the sense ‘rabbit fur’, not until a century later for the animal itself) from Anglo- Norman conis, which was the plural of conil. This in turn came from Latin cunīculus, which is thought to have been borrowed from an ancient language of Spain or Portugal. The word rabbit was introduced in the 14th century, originally denoting the ‘young of a rabbit’, but gradually replacing cony as the general term for the animal.