serried: [17] The phrase serried ranks is first recorded in William Wilkie’s Epigoniad 1757, but it was clearly inspired by Milton’s ‘Nor serv’d it to relax their serried files’ in Paradise Lost 1667. It means ‘rows crowded close together’, and serried is the past participle of a now obsolete verb serry ‘press together’. This was borrowed from serré, the past participle of Old French serrer ‘close’, which went back via Vulgar Latin *serrāre to Latin sērāre, a derivative of the noun sera ‘lock, bolt’. [serried etymology, serried origin, 英语词源]