swamp

(swŏmp, swômp)

a. An area of low-lying land that is frequently flooded, especially one dominated by woody plants.

b. A lowland region saturated with water.

2. A situation or place fraught with difficulties and imponderables: a financial swamp.

v. swamped, swamp·ing, swamps

v.tr.

1. To drench in or cover with or as if with water.

2. To inundate or burden; overwhelm: She was swamped with work.

3. Nautical To fill (a ship or boat) with water to the point of sinking it.

v.intr.

To become full of water or sink.

[Perhaps of Low German origin .]

swamp′i·ness n.

swamp′y adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

swamp•y

(ˈswɒm pi)

adj. swamp•i•er, swamp•i•est.

of the nature of or abounding in swamps.

[1640–50]

swamp′i•ness, n.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

swampy - (of soil) soft and watery; "the ground was boggy under foot"; "a marshy coastline"; "miry roads"; "wet mucky lowland"; "muddy barnyard"; "quaggy terrain"; "the sloughy edge of the pond"; "swampy bayous"

boggy, marshy, miry, mucky, muddy, quaggy, sloughy, soggy, waterlogged, squashy, sloppy

wet - covered or soaked with a liquid such as water; "a wet bathing suit"; "wet sidewalks"; "wet weather"

swampy

adjective boggy, waterlogged, marshy, wet, fenny, miry, quaggy, marish (obsolete) the swampy lowlands of southern Tuscany

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

مُسْتَنْقَعي

bažinatý

blaut-/mÿrlendur

swampy

[ˈswɒmpɪ] ADJ → pantanoso, cenagoso

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

swampy

[ˈswɒmpi] adj → marécageux/euse

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

swampy

adj (+er) → sumpfig; to become swampy → versumpfen

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

swampy

[ˈswɒmpɪ] adj → paludoso/a

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

swamp

(swomp) noun

(an area of) wet, marshy ground. These trees grow best in swamp(s).

verb

to cover or fill with water. A great wave swamped the deck.

ˈswampy adjective

(of land) covered with swamp; marshy.

ˈswampiness noun

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Just as the pack came in sight of the river they saw their agile leader racing down the river's bank, leaping from hummock to hummock of the swampy ground that spread between them and a little promontory which rose just where the river curved inward from their sight.

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On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow.

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I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows.

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There is insufficient labour and poor tools, no satisfactory method of draining the swampy country, and further, I don't think any one would work with the constant fear of an attack from those savages."

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I had never seen blueberries before, and yet, at the sight of them, there leaped up in my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wandered through swampy land eating my fill of them.

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The hunting wil cattle, in a country so difficult to pass as this is on accoun of the swampy ground, must be very hard work.

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The path upon which the party travelled was now so narrow, as not to admit, with any sort of convenience, above two riders abreast, and began to descend into a dingle, traversed by a brook whose banks were broken, swampy, and overgrown with dwarf willows.

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The trappers continued down Ogden's River, until they ascertained that it lost itself in a great swampy lake, to which there was no apparent discharge.

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They had been urged on, by forced marches, over rugged heights, among rocks and fallen timber, or over low swampy valleys, inundated by the labors of the beaver.

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From the nature of the vegetation I was convinced that the land between the ocean and the foothills was swampy, though directly before me it seemed dry enough all the way to the sandy strip along which the restless waters advanced and retreated.

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A wilderness of swampy forest, where no white man has ever been.

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They look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that rotted long ago.

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