Made of or containing hen feathers, or relating to hens and their feathers.
From 'hen' plus '-pen,' an old suffix meaning 'made of' or 'consisting of,' similar to '-en' (as in 'wooden' or 'golden'). This is an archaic or dialectal term.
The '-pen' and '-en' suffixes show how English used to be much more productive with word formation—you could slap '-en' onto almost anything to create a material adjective! We've mostly simplified to just '-en' now (wooden, not woodpen).
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