Marsh

How to spell marsh

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce marsh

What does marsh mean?

1. nounAn area of low, soft, waterlogged ground, often near a river or coast.

Marsh in a sentence

• The path across the marsh was flooded after the heavy rain.

• Rare birds nest among the reeds of the coastal marsh.

Where does marsh come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Marsh comes straight from the Old English mersc or merisc, a word for low, wet, soft ground that floods easily. It belongs to the same broad Germanic family as words found in Old Saxon and Dutch, and it is closely linked to 'mere', the old English word for a lake or pool, since both ultimately describe standing water and waterlogged land. The original sense, boggy ground unfit for ordinary farming, has stayed remarkably stable for well over a thousand years. The spelling is phonetic and simple, which is why most adults find it untroubling; the only point of care is the final 'sh' rather than 'ch'. The same root survives in many British place names, such as Romney Marsh, recording where settlers once found wet, reedy land.

How the word is built

• marsh (single Old English root; no prefix or suffix)