fog
pronunciation
How to pronounce fog in British English:
UK [fɒɡ]
How to pronounce fog in American English:
US [fɑːɡ]
-
- Noun:
- droplets of water vapor suspended in the air near the ground
- an atmosphere in which visibility is reduced because of a cloud of some substance
- confusion characterized by lack of clarity
-
- Verb:
- make less visible or unclear
Word Origin
- fog
- fog: [16] The word fog is something of a mystery. It first appears in the 14th century meaning ‘long grass’, a use which persists in Yorkshire fog, the name of a species of grass. This may be of Scandinavian origin. The relationship, if any, between fog ‘grass’ and fog ‘mist’ is not immediately clear, but it has been speculated that the adjective foggy, which to begin with referred to places overgrown with long grass, and then passed via ‘of grassy wetlands’ to ‘boggy, marshy’ may have given rise via this last sense to a noun fog denoting the misty exhalations from such marshy ground.A rather far-fetched semantic chain, perhaps, lacking documentary evidence at crucial points, and perhaps Danish fog ‘spray, shower’ may be closer to the real source.
- fog (v.)
- 1590s (transitive), from fog (n.1). Intransitive use from 1849. Related: Fogged; fogging.
- fog (n.1)
- "thick, obscuring mist," 1540s, a back-formation from foggy (which appeared about the same time) or from a Scandinavian source akin to Danish fog "spray, shower, snowdrift," Old Norse fjuk "drifting snow storm." Compare also Old English fuht, Dutch vocht, German Feucht "damp, moist." Figurative phrase in a fog "at a loss what to do" first recorded c. 1600. Fog-lights is from 1962.
- fog (n.2)
- "long grass, second growth of grass after mowing," late 14c., probably of Scandinavian origin; compare Norwegian fogg "long grass in a moist hollow," Icelandic fuki "rotten sea grass." A connection to fog (n.1) via a notion of long grass growing in moist dells of northern Europe is tempting but not proven. Watkins suggests derivation from PIE *pu- (2) "to rot, decay" (see foul (adj.)).
Example
- 1. Not to speak of the fog 's reprehensible drifting !
- 2. To make fog , you need lots of liquid .
- 3. He didn 't enjoy the fog , it depressed him .
- 4. Fog was thick , like a sodium-yellow blanket .
- 5. A fleeting early morning ground fog deliver some rare humidity to the air above the desert .