bog
1 Americannoun
-
wet, spongy ground with soil composed mainly of decayed vegetable matter.
-
an area or stretch of such ground.
verb (used with or without object)
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bogs,
present (3rd person singular)
-
bogged,
past participle, past
-
bogging
present participle
verb phrase
noun
noun
-
wet spongy ground consisting of decomposing vegetation, which ultimately forms peat
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an area of such ground
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a place or thing that prevents or slows progress or improvement
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a slang word for lavatory
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slang the act or an instance of defecating
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bogsimple
-
bogssimple
-
have boggedperfect
-
has boggedperfect
-
am boggingprogressive
-
are boggingprogressive
-
is boggingprogressive
-
have been boggingperfect progressive
-
has been boggingperfect progressive
Past
-
boggedsimple
-
had boggedperfect
-
was boggingprogressive
-
were boggingprogressive
-
had been boggingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bog1
1495–1505; < Irish or Scots Gaelic bogach soft ground ( bog soft + -ach noun suffix); bog 1 ( def. 4 ) perhaps a different word
Origin of bog2
1780–90; probably shortening of bog-house; compare bog to defecate, boggard (16th century) privy, of obscure origin
Explanation
You'd be pretty soggy by morning if you accidentally set your tent up in a bog. A bog is a swampy kind of ground made up mostly of decomposing plants and mosses. Nothing can be built on a bog because the ground is so spongy and damp, and no crops can be grown there. The dried soil from a bog can, however, be dried and burned for fuel. A figurative bog is anything that you tend to get stuck in, like a bog of health problems. Things can also "bog you down", or slow you down literally or figuratively, like when your homework bogs you down so you can't enjoy the weekend.
Vocabulary lists containing bog
St. Patrick's Day Vocabulary: Words With Irish and Gaelic Roots
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"The Monkey's Paw," Vocabulary from the short story
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English Words Derived from Gaelic
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“There are big companies that have a lot of money, deep pockets — they could suffocate you, they can bog you down in litigation to the point where you can’t financially match them,” Colter said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
In the summer of 2006, a workman discovered a 1,200-year-old psalter while driving a bulldozer through an Irish bog.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
The hero of bog creation, Ms. Turetsky relates, is sphagnum moss, one of nature’s most efficient sponges.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
The real engineer of a healthy bog, experts say though, is sphagnum moss.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026
The very plants were unknown to them—pink lousewort with its sprays of hooked flowers, bog asphodel and the thin-stemmed blooms of the sundews, rising above their hairy, fly-catching mouths, all shut fast by night.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
More recently, bogs have been recognized as extraordinarily dynamic ecosystems that preserve thousands of years of the earth’s history.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Yet bogs are fragile, and as they are drained, burned or dug up to gather fuel or create more land for agriculture, they release millennia of stored greenhouse gases into the air.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Then in 1857, the regime of Emperor Napoleon III ordered the planting of maritime pines to drain the bogs of southwestern France.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026
The government agency found areas devoid of vegetation, dead wildlife and scorched bogs in an initial inspection of the damage.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
There we discovered pitcher-plant bogs where we’d hike up our dresses, sink on our knees in the rich black muck, and stare carnivory right in the lips, feeding spiders to the pitcher plants.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Regarding his strategy for dealing with stress, Wilcox said: "My wife will know when I am bogged down with frustration. When I re-energise, I do it on my own. Me and the dog, walking."
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
The Don’t Have a Clue bag is a way to keep yourself from getting bogged down, she said.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
With only the swirling sounds of an overhead air conditioning vent to cloud her thoughts, she explained that, at the beginning, “Estrus” was bogged down by an unprecedented wave of writer’s block.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026
This would prove crucial in July 1943 when the Allies launched their attack on Sicily and were initially bogged down by Nazi artillery at Gela, the primary invasion beach.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
But the program was bogged down in paperwork.
From "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Houston
EU membership also risks bogging down Icelandic businesses in bureaucracy, she and other business leaders said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
Late-arriving tax forms from partnerships and brokerage firms are also bogging down returns, O’Saben noted.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 9, 2026
But Kail’s fleet maneuvers keep the production from bogging down without lessening the emotional combustion that is the source of the playwright’s lasting genius.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2025
"For that potential purchase to best compliment Netflix, the planned split of WBD would make its studio more attractive without bogging it down with TV networks that aren't as agile as Netflix," Benes told AFP.
From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2025
Shorty has all these goals and plans, and it starts to seem that those things are bogging him down.
From "X: A Novel" by Ilyasah Shabazz
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