the.com/thicket
nature's barbed wire, growing thorns specifically to ruin your shortcut and shred your shins
means A dense, tangled growth of shrubs, bushes, or small trees, too thick to walk through easily.
from From Old English thiccet, formed from thicc ("thick") — so at its root it's simply "a thick place," the same word you use for soup or a stack of books, applied to vegetation that has crowded in shoulder to shoulder. A cousin of the modern "thick" through the shared Germanic stock.
animal fortressrabbits and birds nest where predators can't follow
old englishname literally means thick-set place of growth
fire fueldense underbrush turns wildfires into unstoppable infernos
legal metaphorthicket of regulations describes hopeless bureaucratic tangles
hedge ancestormedieval thickets became deliberate defensive boundaries