Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Boggy   Listen
Boggy

adjective
1.
(of soil) soft and watery.  Synonyms: marshy, miry, mucky, muddy, quaggy, sloppy, sloughy, soggy, squashy, swampy, waterlogged.  "A marshy coastline" , "Miry roads" , "Wet mucky lowland" , "Muddy barnyard" , "Quaggy terrain" , "The sloughy edge of the pond" , "Swampy bayous"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Boggy" Quotes from Famous Books



... barely above the eastward wall of trees when Kenneth and his man rode away from the home of Phineas Striker. Their progress was slow and arduous, for the black mud was well up to the fetlocks of the horses in this new road across the boggy clearing. He rode ahead, as was the custom, followed a short distance behind by his servant on ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... set in wet and stormy, the rivers kept rising and falling, and the level country was soft and boggy, excessively tiring to their jaded horses; moreover, in consequence of the boats being now left behind, the packs were greatly ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... burdock leaves, and tall angelica, and ell-broad rings and tufts of king, and crown, and lady-fern, and all the semi-tropic luxuriance of the fat western soil, and steaming western woods; out into the boggy moor at the glen head, all fragrant with the gold-tipped gale, where the turf is enamelled with the hectic marsh violet, and the pink pimpernel, and the pale yellow leaf-stars of the butterwort, and the blue bells and green threads ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... world. Both these advantages he resolved to provide against. With this purpose, Bruce led his army down into a plain, near Stirling, called the Park, near which, and beneath it, the English army must needs pass through a boggy country, broken with water-courses, while the Scots occupied hard, dry ground. He then caused all the hard ground upon the front of his line of battle, where cavalry were likely to act, to be dug full of holes, about as deep as a man's knee. They were filled with light brushwood, ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... industriously to the task of improving the talents given him. His well-directed efforts bore good fruit, as year after year Jehossee Island, from a half submerged, sedgy, boggy waste, grew into one of the finest rice-plantations in the south. The new lord of the manor ditched the marshes, and walled in his new rice-fields with dikes, to keep out the freshets from the upland and the tides from the ocean, perfecting a complete system of drainage and irrigation. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... had been fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... so circumstanced as to be obliged to migrate in one country, and not in another: but the grallae (which procure their food from marshes and boggy grounds), must in winter forsake the more northerly parts of Europe, or perish for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... like in old days, and even as late as 1662 Dugdale writes that here "no element is good. The air cloudy, gross and full of rotten harrs[1]; water putrid and muddy, yea, full of loathsome vermin; the earth spongy and boggy; and the fire noisome by the stink of smoking hassocks[2]." But during the Stuart period wide ditches or drains were dug, into which the water could flow and be pumped into rivers. This reclamation has been continued to the present ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... in half an hour they came to the water, a deep, clear, slow stream, fringed with scrub willows, covered with lily-pads, and following the middle of a broad, boggy flat. Yan had looked for a pond, and was puzzled by the stream. Then it struck him. "Caleb said there was only one big stream through this swamp. This must be it. This ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... part. It is a very boggy hay-field, and in wet weather like Wednesday and Tuesday they say it is a swamp. We are all to have our skirts and aprons very short and to be well provided with gum-boots. We shall be two in a bell-tent, or dozens in a ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... misinformed. It was the guns that were carried; the gunners invariably walked, sometimes carrying the guns and the appurtenances thereof. His very first day Dunshie was compelled to double across half a mile of boggy heathland carrying two large stones, meant to represent ammunition-boxes, from an imaginary waggon to a dummy gun. It is true that as soon as he was out of sight of the corporal he deposited the stones upon the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... hillside all glittering wet in the brief burst of sunlight. It was but a glimmer. Heavier clouds came sweeping over; downright rain began to pour. But Ogilvie kept manfully to his work. He climbed over the stone walls, gripping on with his wet hands. He splashed through the boggy land, paying no attention to his footsteps. And at last he got to following Macleod's plan of crossing a burn, which was merely to wade through the foaming brown water instead of looking out for big stones. By this time the letters in his breast ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... that intersect the different routes across our continent are broad and shallow, and flow over beds of quicksand, which, in seasons of high water, become boggy and unstable, and are then exceedingly difficult of crossing. When these streams are on the rise, and, indeed, before any swelling is perceptible, their beds become surcharged with the sand loosened by the action of ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... Again they stumbled and lunged and tore their way through the shadowy woods. To their right the sun had dropped beyond the far-away hills, flinging a last reddish glow up into the highest sky, and this glow seemed temporarily to lighten the whole forest. Through a boggy spot they floundered. Through a jungle they thrust themselves. And at last, as the reddish sky was fading and turning to lead, they came upon a rutty, winding country road. Darkness ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... Tyler, had two regiments, the 23d and 37th Virginia. He deployed his men under cover, but now they were out in a great and ragged field, all up and down, with boggy hollows, scarred too by rail fences and blurred by low-growing briar patches. Diagonally across it, many yards away, ran one of the stone fences of the region, a long dike of loosely piled and rounded rock. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... hand, "[2]If you take away from man every thing that is chimerical, what pleasure will you leave him? Pleasures are not things so solid, as to permit us to search them to the bottom; one must only just touch them and away. They resemble boggy and moorish ground, we must run lightly over them, without ever letting our ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... Nebel so as to be within striking distance of Tallard's troops drawn up beyond the brook. This work of crossing was likely to be a long and tedious, not to say a difficult bit of business, the intervening ground being very boggy. Matthew was far towards the rear of this large body of horse, and it was evident that it would be hours before his turn came to cross. In company with hundreds of his comrades, he began to long for something ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... began to wave to them, and crossing a belt of boggy grass they joined the group. When they returned to Carrock, Cartwright was not about and Mrs. Cartwright said he had got a telegram calling him ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... The boggy portion of North Kingston, Rhode Island, known as Swamptown, is of queer repute in its neighborhood, for Hell Hollow, Pork Hill, Indian Corner, and Kettle Hole have their stories of Indian crimes and witch-meetings. Here the headless figure of a negro boy was seen by a belated traveller ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... below it, what a riot of bloom there was! I had learned, oft to my inconvenience, that the higher the altitude the greater the precipitation. Around and just below timberline are many lakes, and miles of marshy, boggy land. On those first winter excursions to the heights I marveled at the deep snowdrifts banked in the heavy Englemann forests just below timberline. Long after the last white patch had melted or evaporated from the exposed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... at. But now you're here, if it's big cats you want we sure can find them. Only be easy, be easy. You've all the time there is. An' any job on Buckskin will take time. We'll look the calves over, an' you must ride the range to harden up. Then we'll ooze over toward Oak. I expect it'll be boggy, an' I hope the snow ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... The boggy tract across which our path lay was white with fresh hoar-frost, and the thicket away to the south was a haunt for crows such as I never have seen again since; the black birds flew round and about it in dark clouds with loud shrieks, as though in its ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... will be too boggy for riding, and anyway the cattle will be in the high country," the Cattleman summed up the situation. "We'd bog down the chuck-wagon if we tried to get back to the J. H. But now after the rain the weather ought to be beautiful. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... pus the skin becomes soft and boggy at several points, and eventually breaks, giving exit to a quantity of thick grumous discharge. Sometimes several small collections under the skin fuse, and an abscess is formed in which fluctuation can be detected. Occasionally gases are evolved in the tissues, giving rise to emphysema. It ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... meet; but on these occasions a picked spot is chosen where the sport may be easily witnessed by those who are unaccustomed to it. The horses may, in these instances, be available, but as a rule they are perfectly useless in elk-hunting, as the plains are so boggy that they would be hock-deep every quarter of a mile. Thus no person can thoroughly enjoy elk-hunting who is not well accustomed to it, as it is a sport conducted entirely on foot, and the thinness of the air in this elevated region is very trying to the lungs in hard exercise. Thoroughly ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... wander through the woods to their spring pastures; and when once he has taken to this dangerous proceeding, he is said to continue it. On catching sight of a herd, should it not be accompanied by a human being, he drives the animals into some boggy swamp, and there singling out a victim, he jumps on its back, and deals it a few tremendous blows across the head and shoulders, till the poor animal becomes an easy prey. He then drags it off into the neighbouring wood, and devours it at his leisure. This ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... oldest and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of the year in the Tweed, and the trout in the Thames; he may have made topping averages in first-rate matches of cricket; or have made long and perilous marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain, or glacier; he may have successfully attended many breakfast-parties, within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded by all the fairyland of pomp, and beauty, and luxury, which London can pour out; he may have shone at private theatricals and at-homes; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... shepherd endured, therefore, during these weeks of early autumn was long-drawn-out. He still pursued his calling, leading the sheep, when the hot sun had burnt the short wiry grass of the hill-slopes, down to the boggy ground where runnels of water furrowed their courses through the peat and kept the herbage green. But go where he might, he could not escape from the sound of the wallers' tools. It was a daily crucifixion of his proud spirit, and every ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... M'Pherson was an overseer where slaves were employed in cutting canals. The labor there is very severe. The ground is often very boggy; the negroes are up to the middle, or much deeper, in mud and water, cutting away roots and baling out mud; if they can keep their heads above water, they work on. They lodge in huts, or, as they are called, camps, made of shingles or boards. They lie down in the mud which has adhered to them, making ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy

... boggy woods all day, And over brambled hedge and holding clay, I shall not think of him: But when the watery fields grow brown and dim, And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire, I know that he'll be with me on my way Home through the darkness ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon

... evidently risen immediately after Evans had crossed it on his return journey. Here, perforce, they had to stay until the water subsided, and it was not until August 2nd that the river had fallen enough to allow them to cross. The ground was still soaked and boggy, and the horses having had to carry increased pack-loads since the abandonment of the boats, the party suffered great toil and hardship in their efforts to gain Arbuthnot Range. The Range was reached, however, and rounding one end of ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... as if bitten at the ends. Two flowers, characteristically,—three and four very often,—spring from the same root, in places where it grows luxuriantly; and luxuriant growth means that clusters of some twenty or thirty stars may be seen on the surface of a square yard of boggy ground, quite to its mind; but its real glory is in harder life, in ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... rose, black and dripping, above the wet drive. Between their trunks he saw the river, stained with peat, brawling among the stones, and the streaks of foam that stretched across a coffee-colored pool. Then a few boggy fields ran back into the mist that hung about the hills. A red fire threw a soft glow about the library. The room was somewhat shabby but spacious. Rows of old books in stained bindings, which Foster thought nobody read, faded into the gloom at its other end. It was warm and quiet, and ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... seen one look well before, but as his form was relieved against the sky, he looked as he is, the giant king of the forest. He was just in the act of shifting his feet in the yielding surface of the boggy meadow, preparatory to a start, when he was again transfixed by an arrow, in a more vulnerable and vital part. He sprung, or rather reared forward, and came down on his knees, and then several times repeated ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... but the rain fell and the wind blew throughout the morning. We made what speed we could over the boggy earth against the storm, but we knew that we were measuring miles where we should have measured leagues. There was no breath to waste in words, and thought was a burden quite intolerable; it was enough to stumble on through the partial ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... the leaves of a bush in a clump that grew at the foot of the boulder. Suddenly Dick glanced down, noting that his feet were on boggy ground, though the ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... the shell of an Armstrong hut. He whooped and gave chase. The Gauls, sighting the A.P.M. brassard, promptly dumped the hut and dived through a wire fence. Sherlock hitched his horse to a post and followed afoot, snorting fire and brimstone. They led him at a smart trot over four acres of boggy plough, through a brambly plantation, two prickly hedges and a richly-perfumed drain and went to ground inextricably in some mine buildings. He returned, blown, battered and baffled, to the starting-point, to find that some third party had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various

... attempts here were disastrous. The guns sank out of sight in the engulfing bog; while the toiling men became regular human targets for shot and shell from Louisbourg. It was quite plain that the British batteries could never be built on the hillocks if the guns had nothing to keep them from a boggy grave, and if the men had no protection from the French artillery. But a ship-builder colonel, Meserve of New Hampshire, came to the rescue by designing a gun-sleigh, sixteen feet in length and five in the beam. Then the crews ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... the sources of the Loangwa of the Maravi, which enters the Zambesi at Zumbo, and were struck by the great resemblance which the boggy and sedgy streams here presented to the sources of the Leeba, an affluent of the Zambesi formerly observed in Londa, and of the Kasai, which some believe to be the principal branch of the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... a colonial shower, which gave us all a good drenching. Started about eight o'clock; returned to Kyneton; crossed the bridge, and passed several farm-houses. The country here is very changeable, sometimes flat and boggy, at others, very hilly and stony. We were obliged to ford several small creeks, evidently tributaries to the Campaspe, and at about ten miles from Kyneton, entered the Coliban range, which is thickly wooded. The river itself is about fourteen miles from Kyneton. Here we camped, in the pouring ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... gold-seeker in Australia was beset with difficulties. The country about Melbourne, and far inland, was boggy, the soil being volcanic, and abounding in mud which appears to have no bottom. The road to the mines was all the worse for having been ploughed up by bullock teams, and worked into a slough which proved the discouragement of mining parties. Some were even months in traversing the comparatively ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... washing clothes before the door of her house, with her second child, a little girl of four years of age, playing about close by. The cottage stood in a lonely part of the estate, forming almost an island in the midst of low boggy ground; and there was no house nearer than that of M. Tonno. Martha, bending over her wash-tub, was making every effort to complete her task, when a fearful cry made her look up, and there was the child, gripped by one shoulder, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... rode in a fine drizzle; in the timber the wet branches whipped them and sprayed water down the necks of their slickers; in the boggy meadows of the bottoms the mosquitoes hovered round them in humming swarms. The horses stamped, shook their heads angrily and switched their tortured flanks with dripping tails till at last the men greased their noses, eyes and flanks to protect the animals from the singing horde. When they dismounted ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... flooding in southeast (early September to June); poorly drained plains may become boggy (early October to June) ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... as before, we pushed into the breast-high grass, and the walking was easy. Once we crossed a patch of oozy turf from which arose a score of jack-snipe; again we skirted a drying pond whose boggy edges were the hunting ground of marsh hens. Yet other trails could be read here: deer, wildcat, raccoon, and innumerable wee things. And here, too, around the "bonnet" leaves, the silent moccasin lay coiled, so it was well to step with caution in a ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... the moor again, spent an hour or two wandering among the boggy fissures of the top, or sitting on the high edges of the heather, looking down over the dark and craggy splendour of the hill immediately around and beneath him, on and away through innumerable paling shades of distance to the blue Welsh border. His speculative fervour was all ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... but few scorpions, but among them an unusually large species, of a red colour, said to be extremely venomous. They were lying in a boggy place, and I had no means of ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel

... deserted us, or only now and then a patch of them, wind shorn, no higher than one's knee, matted and cowering to the ground, like our thorn bushes on the highest sea-hills. The soil was plashy and boggy; we descended and came to the foot of the Great Brocken without a river—the highest mountain in all the north of Germany, and the seat of innumerable superstitions. On the first of May all the witches ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... questions such as no one but children can ask. The whistles completed, I was marched, with music, to the place where the "Jacks" grew. It was just such a place as boys instinctively delight in—low, damp, and boggy, with a brook hiding treacherously away under overhanging ferns and grasses. The children knew by sight the plant which bore the "Jacks," and every discovery was announced by a piercing shriek of delight. At first I looked hurriedly ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... dryly by: for a drizzling rain fell at noon; but at four o'clock I saddled the blue roan and went to ride with Fogg. We retraced the road to Colonel T——s, and crossing a boggy brook, turned up the hills and passed toward the Potomac. Fogg had been a schoolmaster, and many of his narrations indicated keen perception and clever comprehension. He so amused me on this particular occasion that I quite forgot my engagement ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... pack can be, I have found, a detriment in case of a fall. Yesterday, going through a boggy wood, with rocks and slimy fallen trees, I slipped and plunged forward. Without the pack I could have saved myself; but the heavy roll, shooting ahead, was just enough to overbalance me and bring me down among the stumps and boulders. To protect my face I twisted as I fell. This brought the pack ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... about 1839 in Moorfields, in the boggy soil peculiar to that district, is described as being formed of the bone of some animal, made smooth on one side, with a hole at one extremity for a cord to fasten it to the shoe. At the other end a hole is also drilled horizontally to a depth ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... mad—they'll raise the country on us. Every police trooper in the colony'll be after us like a pack of dingoes after an old man kangaroo when the ground's boggy, and they'll run us down, too; they can't be off it. Whatever made 'em think of such ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... dead. The farm lay inland—"eastward, a little to the north," it was said. The father and mother were both going, and Joergen was to accompany them. On leaving the sand-hills, they passed over heaths and boggy lands, until they came to the green meadows where Skjaerumaa winds its way—the river with the numerous eels, where the eel-mother with her daughters lived, those whom the cruel man speared and cut in pieces, though there were men who had scarcely treated their ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... haste. Rations and ammunition were being dealt out, and long lines of beasts of burden were in motion. Thousands of hands were busily employed in trying to facilitate the passage of the troops across the shallow tributary of the Ravi. The boggy places were made firm by a covering of palm branches and leaves; and logs of wood were got ready in hot haste for the artillery. Heideck could not help wondering why it was that the army had not been concentrated from the first at the point the battle was to take ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau

... of iron and hissing of escaping steam. The force of the contact was lessened because of the sudden slowing up of No. 4, but it was sufficient to send two of the passenger coaches tumbling on to the boggy earth six or eight feet below the track level. The engine stood still on the rails in a cloud of steam, and the engineer was out of his cab limping towards Nancy before her mind had regained its normal conception of things. His appearance ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... the fact that this particular meadow was somewhat boggy; that the feed was too watery; that there'd be a cold wind down through the pines; and other small and minor details. But we, our backs propped against appropriately slanted rocks, our pipes well aglow, gazed down the twilight ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... suffering from the typical despondency and terror, but I could not note the profound systemic depression characteristic of the great majority of cases. Surrounding the wound and extending up the forearm for several inches there was a boggy swelling, exhibiting a sharp line of demarkation. It was bronzed in color, and was apparently spreading. I at once applied the intermittent ligature just above the elbow, and injected the permanganate of potassium solution freely all through the involved tissues, particularly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... a circuitous route, for the side was steep enough to make it a matter for care, and in places the soil was boggy, and in others the rocky ground had broken and crumbled away, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... also used to give their names to the tenants[159]. I can recall an amusing instance of this practice belonging to my early days. The oldest recollections I have are connected with the name, the figure, the sayings and doings, of the old cow-herd at Fasque in my father's time; his name was Boggy, i.e. his ordinary appellation; his true name was Sandy Anderson. But he was called Boggy from the circumstance of having once held a wretched farm on Deeside named Boggendreep. He had long left it, and been unfortunate in it, but the name never left him,—he was Boggy to his ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... Mars. Valuable series of observations were, nevertheless, made at Lick and Arequipa; and they unite in testifying to the genuine prevalence of surface-variability, especially in certain regions of intermediate tint, and perhaps of the "crude consistence" of "boggy Syrtes, neither sea, nor good dry land." Professor Holden insisted on the "enormous difficulties in the way of completely explaining the recorded phenomena by terrestrial analogies";[1005] Mr. W. H. Pickering spoke of "conspicuous and startling changes." They, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... men, who were driving the cattle. The Irish king had been faithful to the promises he had given the king, and had sent them. Thereupon they all turned towards the ships, and it was mid-day. When they came to the mires they went but slowly over the boggy places; and then the Irish started up on every side against them from every bushy point of land, and the battle began instantly. The Northmen were going divided in various heaps, so ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... miles away on the north side of the railway. Now, it had long been my ambition to capture one of these animals alive; so I said to myself, "Here is my chance!" The men could do nothing owing to the rain, and the ground was very boggy, so I thought that if we could surround the herd judiciously and chase the zebra up and down from point to point through the heavy ground, some of them would soon get exhausted and we should then be able to catch them. I selected ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... the surface and looked at it. It's not rich enough, and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do you think I don't know land when ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... to the shore they found that the ground was wet and boggy, and they had to pick their way with care. Once Sam went into the soil up to his ankles, and dragged himself out only with great difficulty. Then they made a detour, coming out on the beach some distance below where the strange ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield

... large, deeply slit, and cup-shaped. When he walks they make a snapping or clicking sound. These big feet were given him for a purpose. He is very fond of boggy ground, and because of these big feet and the fact that the hoofs spread when he steps, he can walk safely where others would sink in. This is equally true in snow, when they serve as snowshoes. As a result he is not forced to live in yards as are ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... by its owners, is in that low, or rather boggy situation, suitable to the fashion of those times. I can discover no traces of a moat, though there is every conveniency for one: We are doubly hurt by seeing a house in a miserable hole, when ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... where the stream encountered some trifling opposition, some two or three managed to gain a footing, but they were unable to extricate themselves. The vast quantity of boggy soil brought down by the current, and which rapidly collected here, embedded them and held them fast, so that the momently deepening water, already up to their chins, threatened speedy immersion. Others were stricken down by great masses of turf, or huge ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... under General Quitman; and that two large cannon, sent by the people of Cincinnati, were within a few miles. And thus hoping and fearing, hungry and weary to the death, they reached, on the 16th of April, after a march of eighteen miles, a place called McArley's. They had come over a boggy prairie under a cold rain, and were depressed beyond expression. But there was a little shelter here for the women and children to sleep under. The men camped in the open. They had not a tent ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... bitter platter stopper hopping diner shiny tiny doted dinner shinny tinny dotted cuter hater poker offer cutter hated paper wider holy hatter taper spider holly riding favor diver bony ridding fever gallon bonny biting clover racer bogy bitting over cider boggy caning halo label Mary canning solo yellow marry planer polo jolly mate planner flabby jelly matter ruder shabby maker robed rudder ruddy taker robbed loping tulip dummy pining lopping cedar common pinning baker tamer moment tuning ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... abundance, in the Middle states, and in California. In Ohio he is a common summer resident, breeding in the extensive swamps and wet meadows. The nest is a rude affair made of grass and weeds, placed on the ground in a tussock of grass in a boggy tract of land, where there is a growth of briers, etc., where he may skulk and hide in the wet grass to elude observation. The nest may often be discovered at a distance by the appearance of the surrounding grass, the blades of which are in many cases interwoven ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... as they proceeded for at least a mile along a cart-track through soft-tufted grass and heath and young fir- trees. It ended in a broad open moor, stony; and full of damp boggy hollows, forlorn and desolate under the autumn sky. Here they met Norman again, and walked on along a very rough and dirty road, the ground growing more decidedly into hills and valleys as they advanced, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... river he followed before, for no other river in the country was so wide or held so much water. As he had gone with the flow of the river then he thought he would go against the flow of the river now, and so he might come back to the glens and ridges and deep boggy places ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum

... so poor, They are sand, moss, or boggy, Their cattle half-famished, Their crops yield but twofold; And should Mother Earth Chance at times to be kinder, That too is misfortune: 390 The market is crowded, They sell for a trifle To pay off the taxes. Again comes a bad crop—- Then pay ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... bearded with rushes, passing like a king, cloaked in the splendours of the sunset, to its suicide in the far-away Atlantic. The demesne of Mount Music lay along its banks; in woods often, more often in pastures; with boggy places ringed with willows, lovely, in their seasons, with yellow flags, and meadowsweet, kingcups, ragwort and loosestrife. Its western boundary was the Ownashee, a mountain stream, a tributary of the great ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... vulgar Kit of the Candlestick, is not very rare on our downes about Michaelmass. [These ignes fatui, or Jack-o'- lanthorns, as they are popularly called, are frequently seen in low boggy grounds. In my boyish days I was often terrified by stories of their leading travellers astray, and fascinating them.- ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... of the hill. It ended at the edge of some aspens. Their white trunks were ghostly in the twilight. Across through the aspens I hurried, straight as I could go; and I came out into a grassy, boggy place—a basin where water from the hills around was seeping! Hurrah! It was a regular spring, and the water ran trickling away, down through ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... and sister could do this; Cytherea more noticeably. They watched the undulating corn-lands, monotonous to all their companions; the stony and clayey prospect succeeding those, with its angular and abrupt hills. Boggy moors came next, now withered and dry—the spots upon which pools usually spread their waters showing themselves as circles of smooth bare soil, over-run by a net-work of innumerable little fissures. Then arose plantations of firs, abruptly terminating beside ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... the shoreline is distant about ten miles from Salt Lake City, and is almost inaccessible on account of the boggy character of the ground, but, by taking the Western Utah Railroad, at a distance of twenty miles you reach what is called Lake Point, where the shore is gravelly and wholesome and abounds in fine retreating bays that ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... are yet in sight. The future Rocky Mountains lie still beneath the surface of the sea. The Alleghanies are not yet heaved up above the level surface of the ground, for over them are spread the boggy lands and thick forests of future coal fields. The Mississippi River is not yet in existence, or if in existence, is but an ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... undergrowth that scratched our hands and faces and tore our clothes. On the banks of a small stream we picked some yellow berries, which Blodgett ate with relish, but which the rest of us found unpalatable. We all drank water from the hollows of trees,—we dared not drink from the boggy stream,—and Neddie Benson ate the leaves of some bushes and urged the rest of us to try them. That we refused, we later had reason to ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... circumstanced as to be obliged to migrate in one country and not in another: but the grallae (which procure their food from marshes and boggy grounds) must in winter forsake the more northerly parts of Europe, or perish ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... caused by the constant wearing of a small spring of water that trickled down the face of the cliff, and which was generally swollen by the melting of the snow, or by occasional heavy rains. The beach, or rather marsh, at the foot of the hill, where the little rivulet joined the sea, was so soft and boggy, as to be utterly impassable. Across this ravine, which was known by the name of the "Devil's Gap," Captain Bowline had caused a narrow bridge, of two planks in width, to be built, protected on the outside by a light railing. On the side ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... on the hill, holding Stasiek in his arms. The boy's head was resting on his shoulder, his right arm hung limply. Dirty water was flowing from them both. Slimak's lips were livid, his eyes wide open. Jendrek ran towards him, slipped on the boggy hillside, scrambled up ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... all parts of the army into closer communication. But General Foch knew that the disadvantages of the ground would more than compensate for this, since the two horns of General von Buelow's army could not combine without crossing those marshes, now boggy enough, and growing boggier every second. The task was harder than General Foch anticipated, for the same rainy conditions that provided a pitfall for the Germans were also a manifest hindrance to the rapid execution of military ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... of trees. He made up his mind to ride for it. While on foot he had been as yet hardly visible. A shot from the salient group of trees decided him. He mounted and touched Hoodoo with the spur. The horse bounded forwards too quickly to sink in the boggy ground. Then a dozen shots told the rider he had been seen. Something like the feeling of a blow from a stick was felt as his left arm fell with gripped reins, and the right arm also dropped. Hoodoo pitched forward, rose with ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... soon crossed the field and reached the shade of the willows by the water's edge. The low bank was covered with reeds and rushes. Tall purple flowers were growing on a green, boggy island close by. It was a very pleasant place, just the kind of spot to choose ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... Apache have told me that they know a place in the south where old houses surround a great rock, and the land in the vicinity is wet and boggy. ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... the wood on the opposite side, stood two immense pines, like sentinels, and such they became to me; and they looked grim and threatening, with their huge arms reaching over the gateway. I drew my boat up on the boggy shore at the foot of a solitary tamarack, into which I climbed as high as I could to look over the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... again. Janet, keeping clear of the bog, went down here intending to jump across. Finding it too wide for her, she followed it along, its varying width promising to let her pass. She skirted round other patches of marsh grass and black boggy places only to find it too wide again. At last she removed her shoes ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... I was marched with music to the place where the "Jacks" grew. It was just such a place as boys delight in—low, damp, and boggy, with a brook hidden away under ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... would most likely stop at the stream where we halted to-day, Hubert. The ground was wet and boggy for some distance ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... for the smoke of the burning houses rolled down towards the Russians, and so prevented them from making observation of the Prussian movements. The king rode up to the edge of the Zaborn hollow and, finding it too deep and boggy to be crossed, determined to attack at the southwest with his left and centre, placing his cavalry in rear, and ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... more than Grimalson understands, I'll bet,' responded Captain Macnaughten, studying the binnacle and speaking as though we were discussing the weather and the crops. 'You may push your finger into that man anywhere, he's that soft and boggy—no better'n slush—and pink. . . . Don't you despise a pink-coloured man? Still, I want you to understand, Doctor, that he's the superior officer on No. 2, for the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... covered with dwarf wood, having the semblance of a forest rather than of a swamp; but on trying the bottom, it was found that both characters were united, and that it was impossible for a man to make his way among the trees, so boggy was the soil upon which they grew. In no other quarter, however, was there a single hedge-row, or plantation of any kind; excepting a few apple and other fruit trees in the gardens of such houses as were scattered over the plain, the whole being laid out in large fields for the growth of sugar-cane, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... and fair of flesh, and in proper weather they rose pretty freely, and could be taken by an angler wading from the shore. There was no boat. The wading, however, was difficult and dangerous, owing to the boggy nature of the bottom, which quaked like a quicksand in some places. The black water, never stirred by duck or moorhen, the dry rustling reeds, the noisome smell of decaying vegetable-matter when you stirred it up in wading, the occasional presence ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... become hot by this time, so we rode to the nearest water, to enable the animals to drink and bathe, and then started afresh at a sharp canter. There were plenty of bizcacha holes and boggy places to be avoided; but we allowed the horses to take care of themselves and us in this respect, and occupied ourselves almost exclusively in looking for fresh deer. For some time we found nothing; then two sprang out of the long ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... paid a visit to a shallow lakelet or pond five or six acres in extent which I had discovered some weeks before hidden in a depression in the land, among luxuriant furze, bramble, and blackthorn bushes. Between the thickets the boggy ground was everywhere covered with great tussocks of last year's dead and faded marsh grass—a wet, rough, lonely place where a lover of solitude need have no fear of being intruded on by a being of his own species, or even a wandering ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... So he looked and called all night, along the trail and all about the woods, with no success. Mr. Mount's home was situated not far from the shore of Fitch's Lake, and the trail went along the margin, and in some places the ground was quite a boggy marsh, and the trail had been fixed up to make it ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... find a scrap of arbutus, a violet or a wake-robin from the woods. We've often motored up and penetrated the swamp I fancy these came from, for some distance, but later in the season; it's so very boggy now. Aren't these rather wonderful?" He ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... the other. The water got deeper and deeper, indeed there seemed to be nothing but water around; then once more it began to shoal, and at last I found that we were walking on dry ground, but still of a very boggy nature. At last we were in something like a path, with peat-holes on either side. It was quite dark before we reached the heath or dry ground I was looking for. Pat even then, I found, kept away from the road I was to have taken. After going a little way ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... course, the Lower Glen, which consisted of boggy places and endless mists in winter, and a small uninteresting village, where the barest necessaries of life could be bought, and where the folks were all of the humbler class, well-meaning, hard-working, but, alas! poor of the poor. ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... father's feet together under his horse, and his hands behind his back, and fastened his bridle rein to that of a trooper, and the word was given for the men to form up, and they began to move forward as sharply as the boggy nature of the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... in these older rocks as protoxide and peroxide, the former of which is soluble and the latter insoluble in water. The peroxide, however, by the action of organic matter, such as is held in solution in boggy waters, may be deprived of a portion of its oxygen and converted into protoxide and thus be rendered soluble. If the iron-bearing water is confined first in a shallow basin and exposed long to the action of the atmosphere the protoxide ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... military aspect on the affair. As to the fever—that doesn't scare me—it can't do me any harm. As a young man I spent a number of particularly dangerous Summer nights in the thermae of Caracalla—you know, of course, what boggy ground that ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... of a mile the tramp was an easy one. Then the boys struck a hit of boggy ground, in which they sank over their knees at every step. When the ground became firmer the water got deeper, and after wading half a mile without a chance to lay down his pack ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... 1.7 made one mile north to where we overtook Campbell and party, having dinner on the bed of the river. Started again after marking a tree broad arrow before L E, at 3.33; at 3.45 made half a mile north to where the confined bed of the river is at places boggy and on the edge of the waterhole the tea-trees are very tall; at 4.20 made three-quarters of a ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... all thriving in a moist or boggy situation. C. Leptosepala is especially choice, its pure white flowers resembling a water-lily. They may be increased from seed, or ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... to the tale;—great joy unto the camp! To Russian, Tartar, English, French, Cossacque, O'er whom Suwarrow shone like a gas lamp, Presaging a most luminous attack; Or like a wisp along the marsh so damp, Which leads beholders on a boggy walk, He flitted to and fro a dancing light, Which all who saw ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... back. His old ridingcoat was like a dish-clout, and he felt icy about the middle. Separate streams of water entered the tops of his ridingboots—they were a borrowed pair and too big for him—and his feet were in puddles. It was only by degrees that he realised this misery. Then in the boggy track his horse began to stumble. The fourth or fifth peck woke irritation, and he jerked savagely at the bridle, and struck the beast's dripping flanks with his whip. The result was a jib and a flounder, and the shock squeezed out the water from his garments ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... so-called "property" was a mere swamp, where there was no place for one's feet to tread unless clad in waterproof boots; hardly a fit place for townspeople, accustomed to comfort. Before the changes on the Friesenmoor could be brought about one fell into pools, one's feet got fast in boggy earth, and the only inhabitants at present were waterfowl, frogs and toads. He did not even take Malvine to his property but lived in Hamburg, going to Harburg every morning and returning ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... in the actively vegetative condition, changing to a duller tint as it advances to maturity. Its habitat (with the exceptions above noted) is in freshwater—usually in ditches or slowly running streams. I have found it at pretty much all seasons of the year, in the stretch of boggy ground in the Presidio, bordering the road to Fort Point. The filaments attain a length of several inches when fully developed, and are of an average diameter of 1/250 (0.004) inch. They branch but sparingly, or not at all, and are characterized by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... Jerry was too paralyzed with fear to move or speak. Then as he recovered he threw off the snake and rolled away, over Harry and close to the boggy spot. Harry also turned away, but came up against a heavy ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill

... we had crossed the boggy patch, the ground became quite dry again, but after running some distance further, which showed me that the natural chamber must have been of huge proportions, Goliba shouted to us to halt and remain there. We obeyed him, puzzled and wondering, but we saw him dashing hither and thither ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... eight miles of the northeast end; it can never therefore be of much value as a commercial highway. In fact, during the months preceding the annual supply of water from the north, the lake is so shallow that it is with difficulty cattle can approach the water through the boggy, reedy banks. These are low on all sides, but on the west there is a space devoid of trees, showing that the waters have retired thence at no very ancient date. This is another of the proofs of desiccation met with so abundantly throughout the whole country. A number of dead trees ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed— Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, Nor good dry land—nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. As when a gryphon through the wilderness With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth Had ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... Casey Ryan never back-trailed yet. Poor time to commence, now when I got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. We'll make out, all right—can't be so terrible boggy with a short rain like that there. I bet," he continued optimistically to the Ford, which was the nearest he had to human companionship, "I bet we make it in a long lope. Git along, there! Shake a wheel—'s the last time you haul Casey around. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... much rain, but thick mist rolled across the top of the hill they were now level with, and everything below was blotted out. Leaving the stones, they crossed a belt of boggy grass where their feet sank, but Festing felt it a relief to have done with the rocks. The narrow tableland they were crossing was comfortingly flat, and he looked forward to descending a long grassy slope. When they reached the edge, however, he got a rude disappointment, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... he could not throw her. Suddenly he raised his head and bolted. Dale answered Bo's triumphant cry. But Pony had not run fifty feet before he tripped and fell, throwing Bo far over his head. As luck would have it—good luck, Dale afterward said—she landed in a boggy place and the force of her momentum was such that she slid several yards, face down, in wet moss and ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... taken refuge in a line constructed behind swamps and overflowed rice-fields, extending from a point on the Savannah River about three miles above the city, around by a branch of the Little Ogeechee, which stream is impassable from its salt-marshes and boggy swamps, crossed only by narrow ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... it: he went back toward Hillsborough, full three miles, and then turned off the road and got on the heather. He skirted the base of a heathery mound, and at last saw the church on an elevation before him, made for it incautiously over some boggy ground, and sank ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... over a piece of boggy ground his eye was attracted to a singular plant, whose tall stem rose high above the grass. It was full eight feet in height, and at its top there was an umbel of conspicuous white flowers. Its leaves were large, lobed, and toothed, and the stem itself was ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the most eagerly sought game birds of the east. Their flight is very rapid and erratic, and accompanied by a peculiar whistling sound made by the rapid motion of the wings; it requires a skillful marksman to bring them down. They frequent boggy places especially "runs" lined with alders, where they bore in the soft ground for worms and grubs. Their eggs are laid upon the bare ground among the leaves and sticks; they are of about the color of dead ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... mosquitoes and diminutive aboriginal men with bows and arrows hiding from you like the beasts in the field that perish. So you travel day in day out, spending nights in Dak bungalows with nothing to eat but tins. I said, "It seems a damned long, dark, boggy, dangerous road," and D. was shocked, till I reminded her I was only quoting Tony Lumpkin. The explanation being doubtfully accepted, D. expatiated on the delight of coming out of the gloom to find all ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... "Your master has chosen this way, and not I; but since he has made the choice, he (and you also) must abide by the result.—And now pick up these things of mine, which you have set down in a very boggy place, and attend to that which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a long way over the boggy soil to the newly opened trench, where the hearse stopped with its wheels half-sunken, and the chief croquemort, without any ado, threw the coffin over his shoulder and walked to the place of sepulture. Five fossoyeurs, at the remote end of the trench, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... any damp, shaded situation. A plentiful supply of flowers from early spring onwards will amply repay any small amount of trouble entailed in their cultivation. As the true forget-me-not (Myosotis palustris) grows in most damp, boggy meadows throughout England it will cost nothing to obtain it—except, perhaps, a pair of wet feet. The winter aconite is likewise a native plant, but is rarely seen in a wild state. Such spring-flowering perennials as the white arabis, herbaceous candytufts, aubretias, primulas, and polyanthuses, ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various



Words linked to "Boggy" :   bog, wet



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com