On the way to work this morning, I complained to Mark about the chances of my hair ending up "wet and soggy" during the rain-drenched commute. Soggy occurred to me a split-second after I'd uttered wet as my brain searched for a word that would convey a condition of being "wetter than just wet." Soggy hit me as a choice term, one that conveys a sense of being waterlogged, thoroughly weighed down with water.
The word prompted Mark to muse aloud, "Is there such a thing as sog?" Interesting question. Foggy is our way to describe an ample quantity of fog. Ditto for smoggy and smog. You can slosh your way through a bog and take photos of the boggy terrain. And you love your dog but wince at his doggy breath.
But there is no sog as a noun form of soggy. Well, not one in common usage. Oh, there's sog, a southwestern dialect synonym for bog or swamp. And there's sog, also a dialect term, meaning a stupor or daze. It's also an apparently obsolete term for a whale (used in no less a venerable tome than Moby Dick). And there is the verb sog, meaning "to saturate" or "to become soaked or saturated with wetness." But this also is a usage relegated to dialect. Don't look for these variations on the term in any unabridged dictionary; you'll have to heave out your OED, as I did.
It seems that out these obscure terms, the adjectival soggy is the form that managed to escape dialect and become accepted in broader parlance. That's not to say there's no name for the soaked condition you might find yourself in upon stumbling out of a heavy rain, your shoes squelching as you walk, leaving damp footprints on the linoleum. For that there's sogginess, a noun built on the adjective.
Dictionary Definition (soggy)
Pronounced [sä-gē]
Roots: from dialectal sog meaning swamp, or possibly from Scandinavian origins.
1. Of land, soaked with water or moisture.
2. Saturated with wet; soppy, soaked.
3. Of people or things, lacking in vigor; lifeless, dull.
The word prompted Mark to muse aloud, "Is there such a thing as sog?" Interesting question. Foggy is our way to describe an ample quantity of fog. Ditto for smoggy and smog. You can slosh your way through a bog and take photos of the boggy terrain. And you love your dog but wince at his doggy breath.
But there is no sog as a noun form of soggy. Well, not one in common usage. Oh, there's sog, a southwestern dialect synonym for bog or swamp. And there's sog, also a dialect term, meaning a stupor or daze. It's also an apparently obsolete term for a whale (used in no less a venerable tome than Moby Dick). And there is the verb sog, meaning "to saturate" or "to become soaked or saturated with wetness." But this also is a usage relegated to dialect. Don't look for these variations on the term in any unabridged dictionary; you'll have to heave out your OED, as I did.
It seems that out these obscure terms, the adjectival soggy is the form that managed to escape dialect and become accepted in broader parlance. That's not to say there's no name for the soaked condition you might find yourself in upon stumbling out of a heavy rain, your shoes squelching as you walk, leaving damp footprints on the linoleum. For that there's sogginess, a noun built on the adjective.
Dictionary Definition (soggy)
Pronounced [sä-gē]
Roots: from dialectal sog meaning swamp, or possibly from Scandinavian origins.
1. Of land, soaked with water or moisture.
2. Saturated with wet; soppy, soaked.
3. Of people or things, lacking in vigor; lifeless, dull.
I'd kill to have wet and soggy hair.
ReplyDeleteThe hair is always lusher on the younger heads of the gents.
ReplyDelete