Other forms: swamps, swamped, swamping
A swamp is low wet ground where the water sits still and trees grow straight out of it. Dark water between the trunks, insects skating on the surface, a boardwalk laid across ground too soft to walk on.
The neighbours are worth learning: a swamp has trees, a marsh has grass and reeds, a bog is deep spongy peat. As a verb, swamp means to flood, as when a wave swamped the dinghy, and then, away from water, to overwhelm: we were swamped with applications, I'm swamped until Friday. Swampy describes ground that behaves like one, and a swampy pitch ends a football match. Drain the swamp is a political phrase for clearing out a corrupt system, and it is a loaded one, so use it knowing what it carries.
1nounswampAn area of low, permanently wet ground where trees stand in still water.
“A boardwalk carries the path out over the swamp.”
synonyms: marsh, bog, wetland
2verbfloodTo flood something with water.
“A wave swamped the boat before they could turn it.”
3verboverwhelmTo overwhelm someone with more than they can deal with.
“The office was swamped with calls after the advert ran.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
swamp is an area of wetland.
Also accepted in games: marsh
Swamp turns up first in North America in 1624, though it was probably in use in Britain before that, and its history is not tidy. It looks like two words fused: Middle English swam, from Old English swamm, which meant mushroom, fungus or sponge, and Middle English sompe, a marsh or morass, from Dutch or Low German sump. Sponge and swamp share one picture between them, ground that soaks up water and holds it.
Proto-Germanic
*swammaz
Proto-West Germanic
*swamm
Old English
swamm — mushroom, fungus, sponge
Middle English
swam — swamp, muddy pool, bog, marsh”, also “fungus, mushroom
English, today
swamp
Built from
Early attestations (starting in 1624) are from North America, but the term was probably in local use in Britain earlier. The etymology is not entirely certain; it is probably a fusion of Middle English swam (“swamp, muddy pool, bog, marsh”, also “fungus, mushroom”) — from Old English swamm (“mushroom, fungus, sponge”), from Proto-West Germanic swamm, from Proto-Germanic swammaz — and Middle English sompe (“marsh, morass”), from either Middle Dutch somp, sump (“marsh, swamp”) or Middle Low German sump (“marsh, swamp”) (from Old Saxon sump (“swamp, marsh”)), both from Proto-West Germanic sump, from Proto-Germanic sumpaz. Swambaz, swammaz and sumpaz are likely related to each other, but it is unclear whether they are of Indo-European origin or are substrate words or wanderworts. The word has alternatively been suggested to be a borrowing from Dutch zwamp (“swamp, marsh, fen”). Other cognates include Middle Low German swamp (“sponge, mushroom”), Dutch zomp (“swamp, lake, marshy place”), German Low German Sump (“swamp, bog, marsh”), German Sumpf (“swamp”), Swedish sump (“swamp”). Related also to Dutch zwam (“fungus, punk, tinder”), German Schwamm (“mushroom, fungus, sponge”), Swedish svamp (“mushroom, fungus, sponge”), Icelandic svampur, sveppur (“fungus”), Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌿𐌼𐍃𐌻 (“a ditch”). Related to sump, swim*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA