Meaning & use
wetland
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable or uncountable
An area of land that is often covered with shallow water, such as a marsh, swamp, or bog.
Grammar: Countable when you mean one area ('a wetland'); often plural ('the wetlands') for a region of such areas.
Patterns
- a wetland area
- protect the wetlands
- drain a wetland
The wetland behind our school is full of frogs and herons.
Millions of birds stop at these wetlands on their way south.
Draining the wetland destroyed the habitat of many rare plants.
noununcountabletechnical
This kind of environment considered as a habitat type, studied in ecology and conservation.
Grammar: No article and no plural when it names the habitat as a general category: 'a loss of wetland'.
Patterns
- wetland habitat
- wetland loss
- restore wetland
The report says wetland is disappearing faster than forests.
Students measured water quality in three kinds of wetland.
Wetland restoration has brought fish back to the river mouth.
Word forms
| plural | wetlands |
|---|
Common combinations
- wetland habitat
- The reed beds provide ideal wetland habitat for ducks.
- coastal wetland
- Coastal wetlands shield the shore from storms.
- wetland restoration
- Wetland restoration is expensive but effective.
- drain a wetland
- Farmers once drained the wetland to plant crops.
- protected wetland
- The lake is surrounded by protected wetland.
Synonyms and how they differ
- marsh
- A marsh is a specific kind of wetland with soft, grassy ground; wetland is the broader, more scientific word.
- swamp
- A swamp is a wetland with trees and standing water, so it is narrower and more everyday than wetland.
- bog
- A bog is a wetland of spongy peat; use wetland when you do not want to name the exact type.
Opposites
Word family
- wet adjective
- covered or soaked with water
- wetness noun
- the state of being wet
- wettable adjective
- able to be made wet by a liquid
Commonly confused: wetland or highland?
wetland vs highland
Highland means land higher than the surrounding area, not waterlogged land; the two sound similar at the end but mean very different things.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'wetland' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Wetland' is a noun for a watery area of land, so it can be drained for building. Option 1 treats it as a household object, and option 3 wrongly uses it as a verb.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “wetland”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.