An archaic or Middle English spelling of rabbit or cony; also, the hunting or trapping of rabbits.
From Middle English, a variant spelling of conie/cony with the suffix -nge (an obsolete agent suffix). This spelling appears in medieval manuscripts and reflects regional variations in English before standardized spelling developed.
The wild spelling variations of 'cony' (conynge, conie, connye) show us that before dictionaries standardized English in the 1700s, medieval writers spelled however they wanted—and it reveals how important rabbit hunting was, since so many spellings of this word survived in old documents.
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