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Etymology
Origin of swampy
Explanation
Something that's swampy is very wet and soggy, like a swampy baseball field after four days of heavy rain. Something swampy resembles a swamp, a wetland where trees, shrubs, and other plants grow. The "wetland" part is what's important when it comes to this adjective, which you can use for sloppy, squishy places that get your feet really wet. That park won't work for croquet — the grass is so swampy! Swampy can also describe literal swamps: "Cypress trees grow in the swampy areas of Louisiana bordering the Mississippi River."
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:
So let’s dive, Scrooge McDuck–style, into the swampy details.
From Slate ● Jul. 1, 2026
Mbappé went on his scoring binge first, in the swampy Meadowlands.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026
Paddle in hand, he now collects the rubbish that accumulates in the reeds along the swampy banks to sell to recycling companies.
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
Architect Albert Speer later claimed that he always knew it would be impossible to build something that big in the swampy soil of central Berlin.
From Salon ● May 3, 2026
My mind feels like a thick, swampy cesspool, a muddled mess.
From "The Queen of Water" by Laura Resau
“Phytophthora thrives on these humid, moist, kind of swampier sites. Unfortunately, that is the kind of problem that's kind of creeping up into our region as things start to warm up.”
From Salon ● Dec. 18, 2023
But the opposite is true, so he depends on a foil who flatters him, a fork in the road that he can portray as rockier and swampier.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 26, 2017
In the early 1970s, Dr. Brisbin was employed checking out the wildlife on the periphery of the plant and often came upon these wild dogs in the swampier parts of his domain.
From New York Times ● Jul. 15, 2013
Kyushu would have seemed a paradise to Korean rice farmers, because it is warmer and swampier than Korea and hence a better place to grow rice.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
As the forest became wetter and swampier, she had to avoid stepping into still, black pools that looked like shadows.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
In the swampiest of swamps, “strategic communications” obviously pays.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2020
This war had led us from the comparative civilisation of German plantations to the wildest, swampiest region of Equatorial Africa.
From Sketches of the East Africa Campaign by Dolbey, Robert Valentine
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
