Definition of "bracken" [brack•en]

• A widespread, often weedy fern (Pteridium aquilinum) having large, triangular, pinnately compound fronds and often forming dense thickets. (noun)
• An area overgrown with this fern. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "My childhood passed on foot and outdoors, in bracken and on pebbly beaches."
• "You crouch with the wild-birds in bracken and ling,"
• "It was snowing so fast that she feared that the way to the peat stack would be blocked up, and therefore her next work was, with the help of the two boys, to pull down as much fuel as would last for a week, and carry it indoors; and she examined the potatoes laid up in bracken leaves, but fancying that if she brought them in, the warmth of the cottage would spoil them, she only took enough for a single meal."