rabbit [LME] Rabbits are not native to Britain. While there is some evidence that the Romans may have brought some to the country, they were established in Britain by the Normans in the 12th century to provide meat and fur. The name is not recorded until the late 14th century, when it meant particularly a young rabbit. Before that, they were known as conies [ME]. In 16th-century slang a coney was what we would now call a mark—someone to cheat or rob, and doing so was known as ‘coney-catching’. We are not sure where rabbit comes from, but it seems to have come into English from Old French, related to French dialect rabotte meaning ‘young rabbit’. It may be of Dutch origin and have a link with Flemish robbei ‘rabbit’. To breed like rabbits is to reproduce prolifically, like the animal itself. This view of rabbits is of quite long standing. In 1868 Queen Victoria explained why she could not be too excited by acquiring a fourteenth grandchild. ‘It seems to me’ she wrote to her eldest daughter ‘to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park!’ A person who chatters incessantly is sometimes said to ‘rabbit on’. This expression comes from mid 20th-century rhyming slang, in which rabbit and pork means ‘talk’. See also bunny.