swamp

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun An area of low-lying land that is frequently flooded, especially one dominated by woody plants.
• noun A lowland region saturated with water.
• noun A situation or place fraught with difficulties and imponderables.
• intransitive verb To drench in or cover with or as if with water.
• intransitive verb To inundate or burden; overwhelm.
• intransitive verb Nautical To fill (a ship or boat) with water to the point of sinking it.
• intransitive verb To become full of water or sink.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Thin; slender; lean.
• In lumbering, to clear (the ground) of under-brush, fallen trees, and other obstructions preparatory to constructing a logging-road or opening out a gutter-road.
• noun A piece of wet, spongy land; low ground saturated with water; soft, wet ground which may have a growth of certain kinds of trees, but is unfit for agricultural or pastoral purposes.
• noun In coal-mining, a local depression in a coal-bed, in which water may collect.
• noun A shallow lake.
• To plunge, whelm, or sink in a swamp, or as in a swamp.
• To plunge into inextricable difficulties; overwhelm; ruin; hence, to outbalance; exceed largely in numbers.
• Nautical, to overset, sink, or cause to become filled, as a boat, in water; whelm.
• To cut out (a road) into a forest. See swamper.
• To sink or stick in a swamp; hence, to be plunged in inextricable difficulties.
• To become filled with water and sink, as a boat; founder; hence, to be ruined; be wrecked.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To plunge or sink into a swamp.
• transitive verb (Naut.) To cause (a boat) to become filled with water; to capsize or sink by whelming with water.
• transitive verb Fig.: To plunge into difficulties and perils; to overwhelm; to ruin; to wreck.
• intransitive verb To sink or stick in a swamp; figuratively, to become involved in insuperable difficulties.
• intransitive verb To become filled with water, as a boat; to founder; to capsize or sink; figuratively, to be ruined; to be wrecked.
• noun Wet, spongy land; soft, low ground saturated with water, but not usually covered with it; marshy ground away from the seashore.
• noun (Zoöl.) See Redwing (b).
• noun (Bot.) skunk cabbage.
• noun (Zoöl.) an Asiatic deer (Rucervus Duvaucelli) of India.
• noun (Zoöl.) The European purple gallinule.
• noun (Bot.) an American shrub (Azalea viscosa syn. Rhododendron viscosa or Rhododendron viscosum) growing in swampy places, with fragrant flowers of a white color, or white tinged with rose; -- called also swamp pink and white swamp honeysuckle.
• noun a hook and chain used by lumbermen in handling logs. Cf. Cant hook.
• noun (Med.) See Prairie itch, under Prairie.
• noun (Bot.) a shrub (Kalmia glauca) having small leaves with the lower surface glaucous.
• noun (Bot.) red maple. See Maple.
• noun (Bot.) a name given to several kinds of oak which grow in swampy places, as swamp Spanish oak (Quercus palustris), swamp white oak (Q. bicolor), swamp post oak (Q. lyrata).
• noun (Min.), bog ore; limonite.
• noun (Zoöl.) any one of several Australian game birds of the genera Synoicus and Excalfatoria, allied to the European partridges.
• noun (Zoöl.) the chewink.
• noun (Bot.) a small North American tree of the genus Magnolia (M. glauca) with aromatic leaves and fragrant creamy-white blossoms; -- called also sweet bay.
• noun (Zoöl.) a common North American sparrow (Melospiza Georgiana, or M. palustris), closely resembling the song sparrow. It lives in low, swampy places.
• noun (Bot.) See Pussy willow, under Pussy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A piece of wet, spongy land; low ground saturated with water; soft, wet ground which may have a growth of certain kinds of trees, but is unfit for agricultural or pastoral purposes.
• noun A type of wetland that stretches for vast distances, and is home to many creatures who have adapted specifically to that environment.
• verb To drench or fill with water.
• verb To overwhelm; to make too busy or overrun capacity.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a situation fraught with difficulties and imponderables
• noun low land that is seasonally flooded; has more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog
• verb fill quickly beyond capacity; as with a liquid
• verb drench or submerge or be drenched or submerged