swamp

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A seasonally flooded bottomland with more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog.
2. n. A lowland region saturated with water.
3. n. A situation or place fraught with difficulties and imponderables: a financial swamp.
4. v. To drench in or cover with or as if with water.
5. v. To inundate or burden; overwhelm: She was swamped with work.
6. v. Nautical To fill (a ship or boat) with water to the point of sinking it.
7. v. To become full of water or sink.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. 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.
2. n. In coal-mining, a local depression in a coal-bed, in which water may collect.
3. n. A shallow lake.
4. To plunge, whelm, or sink in a swamp, or as in a swamp.
5. To plunge into inextricable difficulties; overwhelm; ruin; hence, to outbalance; exceed largely in numbers.
6. Nautical, to overset, sink, or cause to become filled, as a boat, in water; whelm.
7. To cut out (a road) into a forest. See swamper.
8. To sink or stick in a swamp; hence, to be plunged in inextricable difficulties.
9. To become filled with water and sink, as a boat; founder; hence, to be ruined; be wrecked.
10. Thin; slender; lean.
11. 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.

Wiktionary

1. n. 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.
2. n. A type of wetland that stretches for vast distances, and is home to many creatures who have adapted specifically to that environment.
3. v. To drench or fill with water.
4. v. To overwhelm; to make too busy or overrun capacity.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Wet, spongy land; soft, low ground saturated with water, but not usually covered with it; marshy ground away from the seashore.
2. v. To plunge or sink into a swamp.
3. v. (Naut.) To cause (a boat) to become filled with water; to capsize or sink by whelming with water.
4. v. Fig.: To plunge into difficulties and perils; to overwhelm; to ruin; to wreck.
5. v. To sink or stick in a swamp; figuratively, to become involved in insuperable difficulties.
6. v. To become filled with water, as a boat; to founder; to capsize or sink; figuratively, to be ruined; to be wrecked.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a situation fraught with difficulties and imponderables
2. n. low land that is seasonally flooded; has more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog
3. v. fill quickly beyond capacity; as with a liquid
4. v. drench or submerge or be drenched or submerged