Howitzer groups called batteries. The English word ""howitzer"" comes from the Czech word ""houfnice"", from "houf", "crowd", and "houf" is in turn a borrowing from the Middle High German word "Hūfe" or "Houfe" (modern German "Haufen"), meaning "heap". "Haufen", sometimes in the compound "Gewalthaufen", also designated a pike square formation in German. In the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 1430s, the Czechs used short barreled ""houfnice"" cannons to fire at short distances into crowds of infantry, or into charging heavy cavalry, to make horses shy away. The word was rendered into German as "aufeniz" in the earliest attested use in
Witch (word) Old English also had "hægtesse" "witch, fury", whence Modern English "hag", of uncertain origin, but cognate to German "Hexe", from an Old High German "haga-zussa", Common Germanic "*haga-tusjon-" (OED), perhaps from a "*tesvian" "to mar, damage", meaning "field-damager" (the suggestion of Grimm). The element "hag-" originally means "fence, wooden enclosure", and hence also "enclosed fields, cultivated land". Other Old English synonyms of "wicca" and "wicce" include "gealdricge", "scinlæce", "hellrúne". The Old English plural form for both the masculine and feminine nouns was "wiccan" ("witches") and "wiccecræft" was "witchcraft". The earliest recorded use of the word is in the "Laws of