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Bog   Listen
noun
bog  n.  
1.
A quagmire filled with decayed moss and other vegetable matter; wet spongy ground where a heavy body is apt to sink; a marsh; a morass. "Appalled with thoughts of bog, or caverned pit, Of treacherous earth, subsiding where they tread."
2.
A little elevated spot or clump of earth, roots, and grass, in a marsh or swamp. (Local, U. S.)
Bog bean. See Buck bean.
Bog bumper (bump, to make a loud noise), Bog blitter, Bog bluiter, Bog jumper, the bittern. (Prov.)
Bog butter, a hydrocarbon of butterlike consistence found in the peat bogs of Ireland.
Bog earth (Min.), a soil composed for the most part of silex and partially decomposed vegetable fiber.
Bog moss. (Bot.) Same as Sphagnum.
Bog myrtle (Bot.), the sweet gale.
Bog ore. (Min.)
(a)
An ore of iron found in boggy or swampy land; a variety of brown iron ore, or limonite.
(b)
Bog manganese, the hydrated peroxide of manganese.
Bog rush (Bot.), any rush growing in bogs; saw grass.
Bog spavin. See under Spavin.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bog" Quotes from Famous Books



... in woods and shady places, it will thrive best in a mixture of bog-earth and loam placed in a north border; if planted in the open border, it will require to be covered with a hand-glass during winter, and in the spring, when in bloom; the more usual method with gardeners is to preserve them in pots in a common hot-bed frame, ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... were bare And black along the turbid brook; When catkined willows blurred and shook Great tawny tangles in the air; In bottomlands, the first thaw makes An oozy bog, beneath the trees, Prophetic of the spring that ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... These buzzard-heads has drawed every poun' they kin pull. But I has some reason to believe that if you don't hist your hoofs out'n that mud-hole, you'll bog down. You're up to your pant-leg now. Onct ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut in pieces, with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were expelled; and his son Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers Attica and Botia were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... the second year they are better, and the third year, better than the second; and the fourth, as good as the third; especially, if they approach the water. A bank at a foot distance from the water, is kinder for them than a bog, or to be altogether immers'd in ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... down High Street I reach the quay on the Ness bank, where I find in full blast a horse fair of a very miscellaneous description, and totally destitute of the features that have earned for the wool market the title of "Character" Fair. There are blood colts running chiefly to stomach, splints and bog spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels, and clean legs; and slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep—for "ginger" is an institution which does not seem to have come so far north as Inverness. Business is lively ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... rout. The men of Enniskillen charged the retreating army of Newtown Butler, struggling through a bog to fall on double their number, whom they drove in a panic before them. The panic spread through the whole army. Horse and foot, they fled. Not until they had reached Dublin, then occupied by King James, did the retreat stop, and confidence ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... one who, journeying through night and fog, Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog, Experience, like the rising of the dawn, Reveals the path that he should ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... been a middle-class aspiration built on a bog of toil-soddened minds. The piles beneath the castle of our near-democratic arts were rotting for lack of folk-imagination. The Man with the Hoe had no spark in his brain. But now a light is blazing. We can build the American soul ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... of them in the mellow legends of his own country. From the roof depended gorgeous and immense stalactites, some of them reaching half way to the earth, and others of them resting upon the earth itself. Several torches, composed of dried bog fir, threw their strong light among them with such effect that the eye became not only dazzled but fatigued and overcome by the radiance of a scene so unusual. In fact, the whole scene appeared to be out of, or beyond, nature. There were about fifteen ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... more compassionate. She had bestowed upon him a restless imagination, apparently for the purpose of removing him from this scene of trouble as quickly as possible. It led him, at an early age, to explore the passes of a neighbouring bog, where he fell into a deep hole filled with water, and was just on the point of escaping from the cares of the world, when his eldest brother unfortunately came by, and fished him out. Their father seized the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... say that—a bigger man than the squire at Elmwood, or at Leigh I can tell you. Only I would give all that bare mountain and bog, full of wild, Popish, red-haired kernes for twenty yards in a tidy street at Bristol, with decent godly folk around me. Murdering or being murdered, I have marvelled more than once whether the men of Israel were as sick ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... or sloping ground," in Richardson's Arabic and Persian Dictionary; and "Carr, a bog, a fen, or morass," occurs in Armstrong's Gaelic Dictionary. The word I conceive is thus clearly traced to its Keltic or ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... "Bog-dan-ovitch!" repeated Nicolai, his eyes wide open in surprise. "Yes—that was his name. How did you know him? It was nearly fifty years ago since I ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... an ale-house keeper who had been his warm partisan. "No Skulking," cried the honest friend; seizing the tribune of the people by the shoulder; "no sailing away in the night-time. You have got us all into this bog, and must come back, and abide ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his worst conundrums as humour. Judge! The Piozzi relates that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied: 'In Ireland: it was a bog planted with ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... moment; the horse, however, snorted and stared wildly, and was evidently unwilling to cross the seemingly inviting spot. I thought that the scent of a wolf, or some other wild animal might have disturbed him, but was soon undeceived by his sinking up to the knees in a bog. The animal uttered a shrill sharp neigh, and exhibited every sign of the greatest terror, making at the same time great efforts to extricate himself, and plunging forward, but every moment sinking deeper. At last he arrived where a small vein of rock showed itself: on this he placed his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... said she, "what shall I do? Mother will keep me to my chamber for a month, and make me work at the tapestry of the nine bold knights. She promised as much last week, when I fell into Wilverley bog, and yet she knows ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... towards a fair scene of inland beauty, straggled the little hamlet of Pont-y-fro. Jos Hughes's shop was the very last house in the village, the road beyond it merging into the rushy moor, and dwindling into a stony track, down which a streamlet trickled from the peat bog above. The house had stood in the same place for two hundred years, and Jos Hughes looked as if he too had lived there for the same length of time. His quaintly cut blue cloth coat adorned with large brass buttons, his knee breeches of corduroy, and grey blue ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... of about 50 per cent, of carbon, 44 per cent, of oxygen, with a little nitrogen, and 6 per cent. of hydrogen. In a peat-bog, we find the upper part of the scale represented above very well shown: plants are growing on the surface with the normal composition of cellulose. The first stratum of peat consists of browned and partially decomposed plant-tissue, which is found to have lost perhaps 20 per ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... echo. In between came the dull crack of the Russian shrapnel. They broke in the broad, swampy lowlands of the Rawka; they pierced the cover of ice which broke with a tremendous noise while dark fountains of bog water gushed up from the ground. In front and in back of the German batteries one could see the craters made by the Russian hits; they were dark holes where the hard frozen ground had been broken up into thick, slaglike pieces weighing tons and all over the white cover of snow had been ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... we look out northward on rounded mountain tops blue, silent, immeasurable, spreading away, one might almost fancy to the North Pole itself, so endless seems their mass. On beautiful turf through woods, then by a cow path across a bog, the path leads until a bare hill top lies full in view. This is Beulah. Standing there one seems to have the whole world at one's feet. When Petrarch had climbed Mount Ventoux, near Avignon, the first man for half a century to do so, the scene overwhelmed ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... monster named the Afang, that lived in a big bog, hidden among the high hills and inside of ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis

... of the rooms that we traversed I saw an immense vase of bog oak and gold, which was presented to Lord Carlisle by those who favored his election on the occasion of his defeat on the corn-law question. The sentiment expressed by the givers was, that a defeat in a noble undertaking ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a prospector, that a way, most likely he ain't got the necessary sense to camp where a white man naturally would bog down." ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... the Fiend O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... leaves. There were to them even more heathenish indications in her hoopless straight skirts: the good little creatures zealously cut and trimmed a dress for her from the very last patterns. She put it on, and straightway went through bog and brake with Bruno for mushrooms, coming back with it in tatters. They chattered in their thin falsetto voices the last Culpepper gossip into her patient ear—the story of Rosey's balls at Old Point, and Netty's lovers, all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... as his champion, our hero set out to meet his opponent, delaying on the way long enough to rescue a leper from a bog. Then, placing this unfortunate on his horse before him, Rodrigo bore him to an inn, where, in spite of the remonstrances of his followers, he allowed the leper to share his bed and board. That night, while lying beside his loathsome bed-fellow, Rodrigo suddenly felt ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... demands of spiritual functions upon the time of the monks, they cannot fairly be charged with "agricultural indolence." Their glebe consisted entirely of marsh and bog when the Abbacy was created. By 1218—i.e., in about twenty years—it had all been ditch-drained and reclaimed. The beneficial results of their labour are noticeable to-day. Fields immediately adjoining the ruin ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... in Southern California. It is an immense circular valley, rock ribbed and mountain bound. Out of it, through a narrow gorge to the southwest, flows the San Luis Rey River. The ranch is well watered. Much of it during the winter season is semi-bog or swamp land, and at all times affords wonderful grazing for stock. There are circling hills and level mesas and broad valleys here and there. Nestled between the hills are a number of mountain lakes, ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... could not raise A plant in any secret place, In quaking bog or snowy hill, Beneath the grass that shades the rill, Under the snow, between the rocks, In damp fields known to bird and fox, But he would come in the very hour It opened in its virgin bower, As if a sunbeam showed the place, And tell its long-descended race. It seemed as ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... soil till great gaping cracks, a couple of feet wide and ten feet deep, were opened in the ground. The buffaloes had wallowed in the wet season and made round well-like holes that were now hard, dry pitfalls. Here and there a treacherous, slimy watercourse wound its slinking way along, making a bog in which a horse would sink to his shoulders; and over all these traps and pitfalls the long waving jungle-grass drew a veil. Every now and then belts of small bamboo were crossed, into which the horses dashed blindly, forcing their way through by their weight. When they started ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... eludes or rises above the reach of all judicature, is a contradiction which would be too gross to merit notice, were it not that men willingly suffer their understandings to stagnate. And hence this rotten bog, rotten and unstable as the crude consistence of Milton's Chaos, 'smitten' (for I will continue to use the language of the poet) 'by the petrific mace—and bound with Gorgonian rigour by the look'—of despotism, is transmuted; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... if Mother Izan can't keep her cow out of the bog I don't see how she could pull down a stone wall. It's like the story of Dinas Emrys father told me," he added with relish. "King Vortigern was building a castle on Snowdon, and every night whatever they had built ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... pushed aside the entrance flap of the tent. Enclosed was a circle some twelve feet wide. The floor was bare earth. Once warmed by the pump-up "naptha" lantern and the gasoline hotplate, it would become a bog. Martha went out to the wagon to get a hatchet and set out for the nearby spinny of pines to trim off some twigs. Old Order manner forbid decorative floor-coverings as improper worldly show; but a springy ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... decision he closed his eyes and set his lips tight, and his face was as pale as a whitewashed wall. But he controlled himself and as he went out he called back to his adversary, "Wish you joy of the bargain Ole Anderson. The peat bog won't beggar me, and the cattle at Ingvorstrup have all the hay they can eat." I could hear his loud laughter outside and the cracking of his whip. It is not easy to have to sit in judgment. Every decision makes but one ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... said I, as the twa southron chiels gaed thro' the hole, trailing their bagganets alang wi' 'em; "winna the puir tykes hae an unco saft couch o' it, think ye, luckie, O 'tis a gude sight for sair e'en to see 'em foundering and powtering i' the latch o' the bit bog aneath." ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various

... Vivian, bowing to the ground to the lady. "Oh! my Lord I was late, and made a short cut over Fearnley Bog. It has proved a very Moscow expedition. However, I am keeping you. I shall be in time for the guava and liqueurs, and you know that is the only refreshment I ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... his head. "Putting it coarsely, gentlemen, such was the case," he said. "And away at his wit's end he hasteneth, waning and shivering, to a great bog or quagmire—that my friend Pliable will answer to—and plungeth in. 'Tis the same story repeated. He could be temperate in nought. I knew the bog well; but I knew the stepping-stones better. Believe me, I have traversed ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... of stubbed ground, once a wood, 145 Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with—so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!—within a rood, Bog, clay and rubble, sand and ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... goin' still they spread the news, About America how grand it is, The wonders that are waitin' you to choose And gold that common that like sand it is. "And here you stick," says they. "Like some old tree Stuck in the bog belaboured by all seasons. What's ailin' ye?" says they. Well, leave them be, I ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison

... smell of the sea. The road lay up the side of a small bay, at the top of which a big white house stood among gardens. Presently I had left the coast and was in a glen where a brown salmon-river swirled through acres of bog-myrtle. It had its source in a loch, from which the mountain rose steeply—a place so glassy in that August forenoon that every scar and wrinkle of the hillside were faithfully reflected. After that ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... him. He found many an inequality which the fellow had to remove at once. It was no wonder. Twice every minute old Valentine thought: "Now he's coming!" And when he thought thus the shears cut crookedly right into the bog. And the old gentleman would have growled in quite another manner if the same thought had not made uncertain the hand that was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... a favorite breeding-place of the Jaracaca snake, the most venomous and aggressive in South America. Again and again these horrible creatures came writhing and springing towards us across the surface of this putrid bog, and it was only by keeping our shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them. One funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory in my mind. It seems to have been ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... mother had a burn in her cheek. It was put there, when she was a young lass, by order of Grierson of Lagg. She was set among those to be sold into the plantations in America. A kinsman who had power lifted her from that bog, but much she suffered before she was freed.... When I was little and sat upon her knee I would put my forefinger in that mark. 'It's a seal, laddie,' she would say. 'Sealed to Christ and His true Kirk!' But when I was bigger ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... unharness their horses at the meeting of the bog and the river, to the south above the fort of the others; and he threw the withe that was on the pillar as far as he could throw into the river and let it go with the stream, for this was a breach of geis to the sons of Nechta Scene. ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown

... Gurney, the pale poet, was rather thin—a mere breath of romance. She wanted to say something, to make a plea; but it was so plain Cowperwood would have none of it, and, besides, here was Gurney. Her throat clogged, her eyes filled, even here, and a mystical bog-fire state of emotion succeeded the primary one of opposition. Cowperwood knew the look well. It gave him the only ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... On the following morning I proceeded northwards by a small canal, through a stinking bog of rhizophora (mangroves), and then continued my journey on land to Loquilocun, a little village which is situated in the forest. Half-way we passed through a river, twenty feet broad, flowing east to west, with steep banks rendered ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... in the sheath, and gradually passes into the more insoluble ferric oxide. These actions are of extreme importance in nature, as their continuation results in the enormous deposits of bog-iron ore, ochre, and—since Molisch has shown that the iron can be replaced by manganese in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... Maestricht; then from Maestricht up the Maas (left bank) to Venlo, where cross; through Geldern and Goch to Cleve: between the Maas and Rhine this last portion. Flat damp country; tolerably under tillage; original constituents bog and sand. Distances I guess to be: To Tongres 60 miles and odd; to Maestricht 12 or 15, from Maestricht 75; in all 150 miles English. Two days' driving? There is equinoctial moon, and still above twelve hours of sunlight for "M. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... stretching a haversack open with his hands. In it were cartridges. "I gathered all the dead had. 'T isn't many. You've got to shoot to kill, boys!" A man with a ball through the end of his spine, lying not far from a hollow of the earth, half pool, half bog, began to cry aloud in an agonizing fashion. "Water! water! Oh, some one give me water! Water! For the love of God, water!" A grey soldier started out of line toward him; in a second both were killed. Garnett settled down in his saddle and came back to the irregular, smoke-wreathed, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... fortifications with projecting angles, and extending as already mentioned from the harbour to the sea, interrupted at intervals by large pits, said to have been produced by the efforts of the captors to blow up the walls. From these heights, the glacis slopes away to the edge of the bog outside, forming a beautiful level walk, though now only enjoyed by the sheep, being, like the walls, carpeted by short turf. At the termination of this line of fortification on the sea-shore, is a huge and uncouth black rock, which appears to have been formerly ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... consumption at a funeral—lo! there was the dead and buried man sitting on the roof of the house, glaring down on all those who ventured to look up at him. The priest was sent for, and he exorcised the ghost, and ordered him to remain, until the world's end, at the bottom of a moss bog, and to keep him there had a sharp stake driven through him; but, notwithstanding, the ghost rises at night, but as he cannot, from the exorcising of the priest, assume human form, he flies about in the likeness of the bird we call the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... we came to a well-built stone bridge which spanned, with a single narrow arch, the little river of our voyage. It was like a big brook, flowing with deep, brown current out of a thicket, and on through a small cranberry bog below the bridge. Here we launched and loaded our canoes, and went down with the stream, through a bit of brushy woodland, till we found a good place for luncheon. For though it was long past noon and we were very hungry, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... the fortress were strengthened. The head of the Gulf is filled in with a horrible marsh. No landing there. Did we land far away to the Westward we must still march round the marsh, or else we must cross it on one single road whose long and easily destructible bridges we could see spanning the bog holes some three miles inland. Opposite the fortified lines we stood in to within easy field gun range, trusting that the Turks would not wish prematurely to disclose their artillery positions. So we managed a peep at close quarters, and were startled ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... attraction of money, which is said to make the mare go, enabled them to triumph at last over the obstacles that intervened. It was not long before our party began to understand the nature of the task they had undertaken. The cart sank up to the hubs in a bog, and the oxen stood still ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... of a tremendous push from behind. The animals smelled the cool water of a spring which formed a large bog in the midst of the plain. This solitary pond or marsh was a watering-place for the wild animals. All pushed and edged toward it; it was impossible for any one to withstand the combined ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... last to the Modern or Superficial Formation, of which the best specimen is the great Bedford level, that spreads over the lower lands of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire, consisting of accumulations of silt, drifted matter, and bog-earth, some of which began before the earliest periods of British history. When these accumulations are removed by artificial means, we find below sometimes shells of recent species, and the remains of an old estuary, sometimes sand-banks, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... although there were only eight holdings on a hundred and seventeen plantation acres, and they paid but L27: 10s: 2 for that extent of land, which was valued under the poor-law valuation at L68, and in addition to which they had a considerable extent of mountain and bog." Mr Lambert, an extensive farmer in Mayo, declares—"I see among the poor people having land, that those who have leases are much less inclined to make improvements than those who have not." Mr Kelly of Galway, a large proprietor, is asked—"What effect has tenure at will upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... O'Donohue in a voice that would have curdled sulphuric acid. "I warned him no shenanigans! The dirty young bog-trotter's left us here to be eaten up by ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... sweeping brush, and the Squire, with a thundering view halloo after her, clapt the dogs at her heels, and away they went for the bare life. Never was there seen such running as that day—the cat made for a shaking bog, the loneliest place in the whole country, and there the riders were all thrown out, barrin' the huntsman, who had a web-footed horse on purpose for soft places; and the priest, whose horse could go anywhere by reason of the priest's blessing; and, sure enough, the huntsman ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... it must be the dreariest glen in Scotland. The trail twists in a futile manner, and, after all, is mainly bog holes and rolling rocks. The Red Hills are on the right, rusty, reddish, of the color of dried blood, and gashed with sliding bowlders. Their heads seem beaten down, a Helot population, and the Cuchullins stand back like an army of iron conquerors. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... presumably, ought to be in their place. But as they are necessitated, nothing else can be in their place; and the universe is just what it was before,—namely, a place in which what ought to be appears impossible. We have got one foot out of the pessimistic bog, but the other one sinks all the deeper. We have rescued our actions from the bonds of evil, but our judgments are now held fast. When murders and treacheries cease to be sins, regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors. The theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of {164} see-saw ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... watched from Naval Gun Hill the original advance of the 5th brigade. As soon as he observed the movement into the loop, he despatched a galloper to order General Hart to halt; the messenger was caught in a bog and failed to reach his destination. A second officer was sent, but was unable to find the Brigadier. Finally, when the brigade had become heavily engaged, Colonel Stopford was instructed by Sir Redvers to direct Major-General ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... caught his foot, and with a roar of surprise and fury Osgod fell head-foremost into the morass. At the same moment the lad darted away with a yell of defiance, leaping from tuft to tuft with the agility of a hare. Several of the men started after him, but unaccustomed to the treacherous bog four or five were immersed in it to their waist before they had ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... footsteps were so soft that neither scout nor picket could bar his entrance. His paths were subterranean,—through the tepid swamp water, the shallow graves of the dead; and aerial,—through the stench of rotting animals, the nightly miasms of bog and fen. His victims were not pierced, or crushed, or mangled, but their deaths were not less terrible, because more lingering. They seemed to wither and shrivel away; their eyes became at first very bright, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... and with mud. The weight of his armor sank him deeper in the mire, and in the desperate struggles of the steed for extrication, he was in great danger of being suffocated. None could come to his aid without danger of being swallowed up in the bog. ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... in Lagrange County, and later moved to Mishawaka, Saint Joseph County, where Andrew Oliver had taken up his abode. Mishawaka was a thriving little city, made so largely by the fact that iron-ore—bog-iron—was being found thereabouts. The town was on the Saint Joseph River, right on the line of transportation, and boats were poled down and up, clear to Lake Michigan. It was much easier and cheaper to pole a boat ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... now that he had a woman to deal with. "There is a law of England, mark you, and there are those who serve and uphold it, who are the true men and the King's own lieges. Such a one am I. Then again, there are those who take such as me and transfer, carry or convey us into a bog or morass. Such a one is this graceless old man with the ax, whom I have seen already this day. There are also those who tear, destroy or scatter the papers of the law, of which this young man is the chief. Therefore, I would rede you, dame, not to rail ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... muslin, and over all a black silk stock; finally a round vest of white pique, and either a chasseur's or grenadier's coat, usually the former. His toilet ended, he was presented with his handkerchief, his tobacco-box, and a little shell bog filled with aniseed and licorice, ground very fine. It will be seen by the above that the Emperor had himself dressed by his attendants from head to foot. He put his hand to nothing, but let himself be dressed like an infant, his mind filled with ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... grief, pleasure and pain. Beyond this flood a frozen continent Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled, At certain revolutions all the damned Are brought; and feel by ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... of Cardamine pratensis, the pretty early meadow flower of which children are so fond, and of which the popularity is shown by its many names: Lady-smocks, Cuckoo-flower,[134:1] Meadow Cress, Pinks, Spinks, Bog-spinks, and May-flower, and "in Northfolke, Canterbury Bells." The origin of the name is not very clear. It is generally explained from the resemblance of the flowers to smocks hung out to dry, but the resemblance seems to me rather far-fetched. According to another explanation, "the Lady-smock, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... men in the rear shouted, and there was a great splashing and snorting of horses, and we looked round. One of the led horses had gone off the path and was in a bog, and that had set the ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... but a bog this time o' year; ye can't navigate a boat thar. And it'll take till middle o' next week to build a brush road acrost. Guess we're up a ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... another of the furniture becomes outlined to the vision, until at length, especially if approaching day lends some additional rays of light, the whole scene stands out perfectly defined. So it is in entering upon a new study. Many a passage in it will seem to you at first a worse than Serbonian bog—a cave of impenetrable and undistinguishable darkness. But draw not back. Look steadily on. Light will come in time. Your power of seeing will, with every new trial, receive adjustment and growth, and you will in the end see with full and open vision ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... succession of rush-drains divided one from the other by islands. It took me two hours, with my clothes tucked up under my arms, to get through them all; and many of them were so matted with weeds, that my feet sank down as though I trod in a bog. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... address by Mr. Edward Atkinson, before the New England Water Works Association, in 1904, on the subject of "Bog Fuel," he referred to its extensive use in Sweden and elsewhere, and intimated that there was a wide field for its ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... steps to the public-house for my horse, whose head I now turned towards a farm-house where I had written to procure apartments. I had proceeded but a short distance, when he sunk up to the girths in a small bog, but contrived to scramble out so soon as I had dismounted. I knew beforehand, that my future residence was inaccessible for any description of carriage, but as I was little likely to be encumbered in this way, it was a matter of no consideration, but it certainly annoyed me to ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... was old; he was married; he was a bachelor; he was at home; he was in his store; he was pondering campaigns of business, slicing pennies or making daring purchases; he was retrenching; he was advertising; but he was afraid always that he might sink in the bog of competition with rival merchants, with creditors, debtors, bankers, with his wife, his children, his neighbors, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... as the eye can reach, that an Egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through amongst them, and so natural that, were it in Scotland or Ireland, it might pass without remark for some enormous drained bog, on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the sun. The roots and rudiments of the branches are, in many cases, nearly perfect, and in some the worm-holes eaten under the bark are readily recognizable. The most delicate of the sap ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... are strong to the end, which sooner or later is sure to overtake them; and I infinitely prefer such a wild torrent to a shallow brook flowing over a plain, which hurts no one, and which in order to prolong its life loses itself in a misty bog. He, if any one, may be forgiven for his tumultuous career; for when he pleases my brother's great qualities charm old and young alike, and are as conspicuous and as remarkable as his faults—nay, I will frankly say his crimes. And who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to-day As flakes of snow stood yesterday, On fence and roof and twig. The orchis binds her feather on For her old lover, Don the Sun, Revisiting the bog! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... that floated plenteously in the fresh-water. Other amphibious creatures I perceived at times—a large water-lizard that almost rivalled the crocodiles in bulk—and I once had a peep at the rare creature, the "red water-bog" of the Cameroons—for the little river we were anchored in was not far from the same latitude as the Cameroons itself, and the ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... shore, I cried, 'Such is the grave, and such are its terrific sides; those moors and wilds over which I have passed are the rough and dreary journey of life. Cheered with hope, we struggle along through all the difficulties of moor, bog, and mountain, to arrive at—what? The grave and its dreary sides. Oh, may hope not desert us in the last hour—hope in the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... water standing 12 feet from the surface in an orchard? Also probable age of trees before any effect of said water would be felt by them? The soil is almost entirely chocolate dry bog. ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... through the feast and the fight, Ever at liberty's call. The shamrock, the leek, and the thistle, The shamrock, the leek, and the rose, One where the death-arrows whistle, One where hilarity flows. Each from the bog or the heather Gives all a brother may crave, Ploughland and city together— Honour ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... things fashionable, and as she sat at dinner this evening she had on a dress of black alpaca, made after a very quiet and nun-like style; with a thin streak of snow-white collar and cuff round throat and wrist; but without any ornament save a necklace of bog-oak, cut after an antique pattern, and a tiny gold locket in which was a photographic ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence—the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... me might go together. Ay, the bog behind the meadow is well drained by this, and we might put the plough over it. There will be a fine, deep soil in it, I'm thinking. Don't look that way, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... corner suddenly on the black and bottomless bog; with a start of fear he reigned back his horse, and I thought he would have turned upon me. Upon this he made up his mind; and, wheeling, fired, ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... a red-roofed, broad farm with white base and square dots of windows crouched beside the wall of beech foliage on the wood's edge. There were long strips of rye and clover and pale green corn. And just at his feet, below the knoll, was a darkish bog, where globe flowers stood breathless still on their slim stalks. And some of the pale gold bubbles were burst, and a broken fragment hung in the air. He thought he was going ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence

... Asgill; and, ludicrously enough, once more they were suffered to escape by the eternal delays of the "late Needham." At length, however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of local success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county of Dublin. Many desperadoes, however, took up their quarters for a long time in the dwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade of marauders, but ludicrously designating themselves the Babes ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... in for a long tour of duty in trenches knee-deep with melted snow and mud. Each platoon commander knew the particular portion of that battle-battered bog into which he must lead his men. Each company commander knew the section of shell-punctured, swamp land that was his to hold, and the battalion commander, a veteran American soldier, was well aware of the particular ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... with wandering sophistries and diatribes of self-blame. His mind had trampled upon itself in throes of introspection until it was often difficult to say which way the paths of the narrative really led. He had thought so much and acted so little that he travelled in a veritable bog of indecision. And yet, withal, some ideas, by constant attrition, had acquired a really striking form. "I am afraid before life," he said. "It makes me dizzy ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... Belfast, Ireland, here met me, presenting a beautiful bog-oak casket, lined with gold, and carved with appropriate national symbols, containing an offering for the cause of the oppressed. They read a beautiful address, and touched upon the importance of inspiring with the principles of emancipation the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... time to be joggin' whin he heard the whistle—and says the fox to himself, 'Troth, indeed, you think yourself a mighty great ranger now,' says he, 'and you think you're very cute, but upon my tail, and that's a big oath, I'd be long sorry to let such a mallet-headed bog-throtter as yourself take a dirty advantage o' me, and I'll engage,' says the fox, 'I'll make you lave the door soon and suddint,'—and with that he turned to where the ranger's brogues was lyin' hard by beside the fire, and, what would you think, but the fox tuk one o' the brogues, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... boy wandered far and wide, over moor and bog, and gathered rare plants and herbs, and laid them down near the hermit's cell. And when the hermit was inside, the boy came into the garden, and gathered the stones and swept the paths, and tied up such plants as were drooping, and did all neatly ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... I remember him telling was as to the origin of "Bog Latin." A sheriff's officer was sent to serve a writ, but the object of his search took refuge in a bog. The sheriff's officer, determined to do the thing properly, endorsed his writ "Non comeatibus in swampo," and in Irish legal circles the term "Bog Latin" was ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir

... and forgetful ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and he'd come to Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had a portmanteau, a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a tin bog. I sat beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance, and he told me all about it. First he asked me would I mind shifting round to the other side, as he was rather deaf in that ear. He'd been kicked by ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson



Words linked to "Bog" :   American bog asphodel, bog whortleberry, bog moss, bog pimpernel, slack, slow, bog down, northern bog lemming, southern bog lemming, bog rein orchid, bog rose, bog candles, peat bog, bog kalmia, quagmire, quag, slow down, common bog rosemary, break off, break, European bog asphodel, bog rosemary, bog bilberry, slough, bog aster, discontinue, bog asphodel, bog soil, bog plant, morass, bog star, bog spavin, bog hemp, slow up, boggy, bog rhubarb



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