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den

nounverbnounnounadverbcommon in dialogue

  • Canada//ˈdɛn//
  • //ˈdɪ̟n//

A small cavern or hollow place in the side of a hill, or among rocks; especially, a cave used by a wild animal for shelter or concealment.

noun

  1. 1

    A small cavern or hollow place in the side of a hill, or among rocks; especially, a cave used by a wild animal for shelter or concealment.

    a den of robbers

    Daniel was put into the lions’ den.

  2. 2

    A squalid or wretched place; a haunt.

    a den of vice

    an opium den; a gambling den

    Lying in a den in Bombay With a slack jaw and not much to say

  3. 3

    A comfortable room not used for formal entertaining.

    Near-synonyms: family room, sunroom, Florida room, Arizona room, rec room, playroom

  4. 4

    Synonym of fort (“structure improvised from furniture, etc. for playing games.”).

    Our little girls love using bedsheets and other stuff around the house to make dens in the living room and pretending they're on adventures.

  5. 5

    obsoleteA narrow glen; a ravine; a dell.

    I have made several visits of late to the Den of Rubislaw

  6. 6

    A group of Cub Scouts of the same age who work on projects together.

Etymology

From Middle English den, from Old English denn (“den, lair (of a beast), cave; a swine-pasture, a woodland pasture for swine”), from Proto-West Germanic *dani (“threshing-floor, barn-floor”). Cognate with Scots den (“den, lair”), Middle Dutch denne (“burrow, den, cave, attic”), Dutch den (“ship's deck, threshing-floor, mountain floor”), Middle Low German denne, danne (“threshing-floor, small dale”), German Tenne (“threshing-floor, barn for threshing”).

verb

  1. 1

    To ensconce or hide oneself in (or as in) a den.

  2. 2

    Of an animal, to use as a den; to take up residence in.

    Although present in virtually all habitats, it preferred to den in caves, so its distribution, especially in cold, northern areas, may have been limited to limestone and other rocky regions where caves form.

    “Denning” – behaviour around making dens – has changed and bears are swimming long distances, but, says Aars, there is still enough sea ice in the spring for the bears to hunt successfully.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of denierAbbreviation of denier (a unit of weight).

Etymology

From Old French denier, from Latin denarius.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of deneAlternative form of dene.

adverb

  1. 1

    Variant of thenPronunciation spelling of then, representing AAVE, Bermuda English.

Forms

plural
dens
past tense
denned
past participle
denned
present participle
denning
third person singular
dens
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).