fog

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A thick cloud near the ground that makes it hard to see.

   Thick fog made it difficult to drive on the motorway.

2. 2
   verb

   To cover or become covered with steam or mist.

   The mirror fogged up every time he had a shower.

3. 3
   noun

   A confused, unclear state of mind.

   After waking up, he was in a fog and could barely think.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Fog in medieval English named a kind of coarse grass and may be related to Norwegian fogg in the same sense. The word for dense mist is recorded from the mid-16th century, although foggy meaning “misty” occurs earlier; the origin of this mist sense is unknown.

Origin uncertain; but probably of North Germanic origin. Probably either a back-formation from foggy (“covered with tall grass; thick, marshy”), from the earlier-attested fog (“tall grass”) (see below), or from or related to Danish fog (“spray, shower, drift, storm”), related to Icelandic fok (“spray, any light thing tossed by the wind, snowdrift”), Icelandic fjúka (“to blow, drive”), from Proto-Germanic *feukaną (“to whisk, blow”), from Proto-Indo-European *pug- (“billow, bulge, drift”), from *pew-, *pow- (“to blow, drift, billow”), in which case related to German fauchen (“to hiss, spit, spr…

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary