glen

Etymology

, North Ayrshire, Scotland, UK]] From Middle English glen, borrowed from Irish gleann and Scottish Gaelic gleann, Old and Middle Irish glend, glenn (“mountain valley”), from Proto-Celtic *glendos (“valley”), hypothetically from Proto-Indo-European *glend- (“shore”) but the word may have been borrowed from a non-Indo-European substrate language. Compare Manx glion, Welsh glyn. Doublet of glyn.

noun

1. A secluded and narrow valley, especially one with a river running through it; a dale; a depression between hills.
   What riches too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those forest-shrouded glens and peaks? And beyond, and beyond again, ever new islands, new continents perhaps, an inexhaustible wealth of yet undiscovered worlds. 1871, Charles Kingsley, chapter II, in At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies