A piece of wet, spongy land; low ground saturated with water; soft, wet ground which may have a growth of certain kinds of trees, but is unfit for agricultural or pastoral purposes.
"The canoe struggled to navigate through the deep swamp where tall reeds and cypress trees choked the slow-moving water."
In plain English: A swamp is an area of land that stays wet and covered with water, usually filled with trees and plants.
"The thick swamp made travel across the marsh difficult."
Usage: Avoid using "swamp" as a synonym for "flood," as it specifically implies being overwhelmed by volume rather than just covered in water. The verb form often carries a connotation of being burdened to the point of collapse, distinct from merely getting wet.
To drench or fill with water.
"The heavy rain swamped the low-lying fields, leaving them completely underwater."
In plain English: To swamp something means to overwhelm it with too many people, tasks, or problems so that it cannot handle them easily.
"The sudden rainstorm turned our hiking trail into an impassable swamp."
The word swamp likely entered English usage in Britain before it appears in written records from early 17th-century North America. Its earliest documented uses date back to around 1624 when settlers began describing wet, boggy land across the continent.