Wash, Wetland, Wet Meadow, Will-o'-the-Wisp: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Marsh, Swamp

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

In the current alphabetic series of terms that refer to such areas, here are the origins, forms, and histories of wash, wetland, wet meadow, and will-o'-the-wisp. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Wash
The Modern English noun wash (17th century) comes from Middle English wasche (15th century), from verb forms that go back to Old English wascan ("to wash," before 12th century).

The earliest recorded uses of the noun wash refer to a land area periodically covered, or "washed," by the action of a sea or a river (15th century). That meaning of the word soon developed into the use of wash as an all-purpose term to denote another kind of watery land-a bog, fen, or marsh (15th century).

Wetland
Wetland entered English in the 18th century as a combination of the adjective wet and the noun land.

In simplest terms, any land or area, such as a tidal flat or a swamp, containing much soil moisture is a wetland (1778). The word is usually used in the plural.

Scientists often require an area to have three specific characteristics before classifying it as a wetland: it must have soil that has been saturated long enough to become anaerobic (free of oxygen); water must be present during certain times of the year; and the area must have hydrophytic plants, that is, ones that grow in water or saturated soil.

Wet Meadow
Modern English meadow (16th century) comes from Middle English medwe (13th century), from Old English mædwe (before 12th century), from mæd ("meadow," before 12th century), of uncertain origin.

The original meaning of meadow is a grassland (before 1000). In some districts the word particularly applied to a low, well-watered tract of grassy land near a river. Thus the word gradually became associated with marshland, as in a 1551 document that refers to "watery and marrish [marshy] meadows" (Oxford English Dictionary).

In America during the colonial period, meadow came to denote a low level tract of uncultivated grassland, especially in marshy areas near a river or a sea (1670).

The marsh sense of meadow has remained part of American English, and today the fuller term wet meadow means a freshwater marsh that looks much like a grassy meadow except that the soil is saturated. Wet meadows occur in poorly drained areas, such as the basins of shallow lakes, low-lying farmland, and stretches of land between marshes and uplands.

Will-o'-the-Wisp
Will-o'-the-wisp, or will-of-the-wisp, entered English in the 17th century as a phrase built on Will, short for William meaning any man, and wisp, meaning a thready streak.

The phrase has been recorded in a vast number of ways, such as Will with the wispe (1608), Willy Wispe (1628), Will-a-wisps (1679), and Will in the Wisp (1689). The ancestor of the current form is Will of the Wisp (1661), with will-o'-the-wisp finally being established in the 19th century.

The phrase denotes what is also known as ignis fatuus (Medieval Latin, literally "foolish fire," c. 1563) and jack-o'-lantern (1673 in one of its earlier forms): a light that sometimes flashes at night over marshy ground, usually attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter.

To early observers, the streaks of light suddenly appearing and disappearing suggested a mischievous spirit leading people this way and that. Thus the light was personified by the name Will.

Figuratively, a delusional or illusive goal is a will-o'-the-wisp.
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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.