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swamp

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Swamp
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swamp

  [swomp]
Use swamp in a Sentence
–noun
1. a tract of wet, spongy land, often having a growth of certain types of trees and other vegetation, but unfit for cultivation.
–verb (used with object)
2. to flood or drench with water or the like.
3. Nautical. to sink or fill (a boat) with water.
4. to plunge or cause to sink in or as if in a swamp.
5. to overwhelm, esp. to overwhelm with an excess of something: He swamped us with work.
6. to render helpless.
7. to remove trees and underbrush from (a specific area), esp. to make or cleave a trail (often fol. by out).
8. to trim (felled trees) into logs, as at a logging camp or sawmill.
–verb (used without object)
9. to fill with water and sink, as a boat.
10. to sink or be stuck in a swamp or something likened to a swamp.
11. to be plunged into or overwhelmed with something, esp. something that keeps one busy, worried, etc.
Origin:
1615–25; < D zwamp creek, fen; akin to sump and to MLG swamp, ON svǫppr sponge

Related forms:
swampish, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Swamp
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swamp   (swŏmp, swômp)   
n.  

    1. A seasonally flooded bottomland with more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog.

    2. 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.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

swamp 
1624 (first used by Capt. John Smith, in reference to Virginia), perhaps a dial. survival from an O.E. cognate of O.N. svoppr "sponge, fungus," from P.Gmc. *swampuz; but traditionally connected with M.E. sompe "morass, swamp," probably from M.Du. somp or M.L.G. sump "swamp." Related to O.N. svöppr "sponge." The verb sense of "overwhelm, sink (as if in a swamp)" is first recorded 1772; fig. sense is from 1818. Swamp Yankee "rural, rustic New Englander" is attested from 1941.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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