Glade, Hammock, Hummock: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Marsh, Swamp

The natural features of a region are its topography (from Greek topos ("place"). Marshes, swamps, and related wetlands are important examples of topographic features.

In the current alphabetic series of terms that refer to such areas, here are the origins, forms, and histories of glade, hammock, and hummock. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Glade
Glade entered English in the 16th century. Its origin is uncertain, but early uses of the noun suggest that it came from the adjective glad ("joyful") and that it denoted "a sunny place," specifically a clearing in a wooded area (1529). That sense of the word is still in use.

However, by the 17th century, many people who used glade began to associate or confuse it with shade, thus giving the word darker meanings. John Dryden, for example, in 1697 referred to a "gloomy glade" (Oxford English Dictionary).

In the United States, a marshy, low-lying area is called a glade (1796). In the South, the word has the specific meaning of a periodically inundated grassy marsh running between adjacent slopes. The word is commonly used generically in referring to the marshes of The Everglades, a large tract of marshland in southern Florida.

Hammock, Hummock
The topographic words hammock (16th century) and hummock (17th century) are synonymous terms, with the second evolving as an altered form of the first. The origin of the words is uncertain (hammock meaning a swinging couch is a completely different word).

The original meaning of hammock/hummock is a rounded knoll or hillock (1555). The first to use the word were mariners who applied it to any cone-shaped eminence of land on a seacoast. Later it referred to an elevation or protuberance rising above the general level of any surface, such as a ridge of ice (1818).

From that reference to height came an extended sense of the word in the United States, especially Florida: a fertile area that is higher than its surroundings and that is characterized by hardwood vegetation and soil rich in organic material; specifically, an island of dense tropical undergrowth in the marshes of The Everglades (1636). This sense of the word is usually spelled hammock by the people in the southern regions themselves.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.