Library / English Dictionary

BOG

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Wet spongy ground of decomposing vegetation; has poorer drainage than a swamp; soil is unfit for cultivation but can be cut and dried and used for fuel

Synonyms:

bog; peat bog

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("bog" is a kind of...):

wetland (a low area where the land is saturated with water)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "bog"):

mire; morass; quag; quagmire; slack (a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot)

slough (a hollow filled with mud)

Derivation:

boggy ((of soil) soft and watery)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Get stuck while doing something

Example:

She bogged down many times while she wrote her dissertation

Synonyms:

bog; bog down

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "bog" is one way to...):

break; break off; discontinue; stop (prevent completion)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Sense 2

Meaning:

Cause to slow down or get stuck

Example:

The vote would bog down the house

Synonyms:

bog; bog down

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "bog" is one way to...):

slow; slow down; slow up (cause to proceed more slowly)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Credits

 Context examples: 

I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a mist, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without knowing where I am going.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It's the worst road to travel after dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She promised as much last week, when I fell into Wilverley bog, and yet she knows that I cannot abide needle-work.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

After a few hundred yards of thick forest, containing many trees which were quite unknown to me, but which Summerlee, who was the botanist of the party, recognized as forms of conifera and of cycadaceous plants which have long passed away in the world below, we entered a region where the stream widened out and formed a considerable bog.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Again and again these horrible creatures came writhing and springing towards us across the surface of this putrid bog, and it was only by keeping our shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)