Pan, Peat Bog, Playa Lake: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Marsh, Swamp

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

In the current alphabetic series of terms that refer to such places, here are the origins, forms, and histories of pan, peat, peat bog, peat moor, peat moss, and playa lake. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Pan
Modern English pan comes from Middle English pan (14th century) and panne, from Old English panne (before 12th century), from Latin patina, from Greek patane. The Old English word is akin to Old High German phanna and Old Norse panna.

The original meaning of pan is a vessel, usually broad and shallow, for domestic use (9th century).

A natural basin or depression in land, especially one that contains standing water or mud and leaves a salt deposit, is a pan (1573).

Peat
The Modern English bog-related word peat (16th century) comes from Middle English pete (14th century), from Medieval Latin peta. The word may be Celtic in origin and be akin to Welsh peth ("thing, portion").

The original meaning of peat, recorded in Latin texts (as peta) in the 13th century and in English texts (as pete) in the 14th century, is a piece of the substance now called, as a whole, peat, a sense acquired in the 15th century. Peat is partially carbonized vegetable matter formed by the partial decomposition in water of sphagnum mosses, sedges, and other plants.

A peat bog (1775) is a bog containing peat. Also known as a peat moor (1832).

Peat moss, in general English, is sphagnum, moss that grows only in wet acid areas and becomes compacted with other plant debris to form peat (1880). In northern England dialect, a peat moss is a peat bog (13th century).

Playa Lake
Playa entered English in the 19th century as a borrowing from Spanish playa ("playa," literally "beach, shore"), from Late Latin plagia ("beach"), from Greek plagios ("oblique").

A playa, or, in full, playa lake, is a round, usually flat-bottomed hollow in the ground that is sometimes a dry basin and sometimes an undrained shallow lake (1854). The term is generally applied to such features located in the southern areas of the High Plains in the United States-Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

Most playas derive their water only from spring rainstorms, though some are fed by underlying, often salty, aquifers. The water that periodically covers playas slowly filters into the groundwater system or evaporates, leaving behind a marshy basin of salt, sand, and mud.
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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.