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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:
The landscape was rugged and swampy, filled with insects and dense vegetation that Osinski described as "deep, twisty, gnarly vegetation."
From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026
Southern California’s swampy summer continues to set records, with humidity levels creating conditions that feel more like Florida than the West Coast.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026
In Ansar standing next to the swampy swimming pool, building owner Mohammed Saab told AFP he waited every year to rent it out over the summer.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
So let’s dive, Scrooge McDuck–style, into the swampy details.
From Slate ● Jul. 1, 2026
The farther south the forest went, the more dry birch and pine would give way to the swampy shores of the messy, meandering Sogozha.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
“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
This is a skillset of someone who is happiest in the darkest corners of government—the swampiest of swamps—a realm of acronyms, white papers, and multihyphenate bureaucracies.
From Slate ● Oct. 15, 2026
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 Robert Valentine Dolbey
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