The earliest known use of this word is in Polybius:[1] ho de kuniklos porrôthen men horômenos einai dokei lagôs mikros, hotan d' eis tas cheiras labêi tis, megalên echei diaphoran kai kata tên epiphaneian kai kata tên brôsin: The rabbit indeed at a distance looks like a small hare; but when taken in the hand, it is found to be widely different both in appearance and in the taste of its flesh; and it also lives generally underground.An etymology has been proposed for the Greek word deriving it from a word meaning "burrow"; but it is more probable that evolution was to "(rabbit) hole" from "rabbit", rather than the reverse.
[citation needed] With the rise of monasticism several centuries later, a renewed interest in cunicularia arose, in part because they were productively and easily implemented within the monastic economic context.
[citation needed] Cunicularium was borrowed into Middle English as conygere, conyger, giving rise to numerous later variants such as conygarye, conyrie, and conygree.
[citation needed] Note that in the following quote from a medieval law forbidding commoners the means to hunt, warrens are still distinct from connigries.
[2] That divers artificers, labourers, servants, and grooms, keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays, when good Christian people be at church hearing devine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries of lords and others, to the very great destruction of the same; and sometimes under such colour they make their assemblies, conferences, and conspiracies to rise, and disobey their allegiance.