Meaning & use
boggy
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Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Soft, wet and muddy, so that your feet sink in.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after a verb: boggy ground; the field is boggy.
Patterns
- boggy ground
- boggy field
The path was boggy after the rain.
We crossed a boggy field in rubber boots.
Cattle avoided the boggy corner of the meadow.
adjectivebefore a noun
Describing a place that is a bog or contains bogs.
Grammar: Usually comes before a noun: boggy moorland.
Patterns
- boggy moorland
The boggy moorland stretched for miles.
Rare plants grow in boggy places.
The valley's boggy floor made building hard.
Word forms
| comparative | boggier |
|---|---|
| superlative | boggiest |
Common combinations
- boggy ground
- Boggy ground slowed the walkers.
- boggy field
- A boggy field lay beside the road.
- boggy land
- Boggy land is poor for farming.
- boggy area
- Avoid the boggy area near the stream.
- boggy moor
- The boggy moor was hard to cross.
Synonyms and how they differ
- marshy
- Marshy suggests a wetland with reeds and standing water, while boggy emphasizes soft, spongy ground.
- swampy
- Swampy describes land with deep water and trees, so it is wetter than boggy.
- waterlogged
- Waterlogged means full of water, and it can describe things like a field or a boat as well as soil.
- squelchy
- Squelchy is informal and describes how the ground sounds and feels underfoot.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: boggy or foggy?
boggy vs foggy
Foggy means filled with fog, while boggy means wet and soft underfoot.
Practice
Which weather is most likely to make a field boggy?
Choose one answer.
Heavy rain soaks the soil until it turns soft and wet. Dry weather has the opposite effect.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “boggy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.