BOG

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does bog mean? 

• BOG (noun)
  The noun BOG has 1 sense:

1. 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

  Familiarity information: BOG used as a noun is very rare.

• BOG (verb)
  The verb BOG has 2 senses:

1. cause to slow down or get stuck

2. get stuck while doing something

  Familiarity information: BOG used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BOG (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

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

bog; peat bog

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)

• BOG (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they bog    ... he / she / it bogs   
Past simple: bogged   
Past participle: bogged   
-ing form: bogging   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cause to slow down or get stuck

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

bog; bog down

Context example:

The vote would bog down the house

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

Sense 2

Meaning:

Get stuck while doing something

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

bog; bog down

Context example:

She bogged down many times while she wrote her dissertation

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

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

Sentence frames:

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

 Context examples 

He saw my hesitation, and spoke:—The logic is simple, no madman's logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Right across the lower part of the bog lay a miry path.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

After climbing down from the china wall the travelers found themselves in a disagreeable country, full of bogs and marshes and covered with tall, rank grass.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

Nay, nay, Sir Nigel, cried the prince, fasten not the offence upon Sir Robert Briquet, for we are one and all bogged in the same mire.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I took four lessons, and then I stuck fast in a grammatical bog.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The traces of the bog were removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite decent.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It passed so swiftly that we were unable to say what it was; but if it were a deer, as was claimed by Lord John, it must have been as large as those monstrous Irish elk which are still dug up from time to time in the bogs of my native land.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Phosphine is among the stinkiest, most toxic gases on Earth, found in some of the foulest of places, including penguin dung heaps, the depths of swamps and bogs, and even in the bowels of some badgers and fish.

(Poisonous Earthly Molecule May Be Sign of Extraterrestrial Life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

“That comes—as you call it—of being arrant asses,” retorted the doctor, “and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though of course it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)