Etymograph

English

fog

Fog may come from English foggy ‘covered with tall grass’.

  1. English1500–presentfoggy‘covered with tall grass’uncertain
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1913fog

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Lineage

  1. English1500–presentfoggy‘covered with tall grass’uncertain
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1913fog

Earliest quotation: 1913, Mrs. Marie Belloc Lowndes, London: Methuen: “Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out…”

The story

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, spray’).

Every English word from English foggy

Another origin of fog

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500fogge‘tall grass’
  2. Englishtodayfog

From Middle English fogge (‘tall grass’), probably from Norwegian fogg (‘tall, worthless grass’); compare Scots fog (‘moss; lichen’).

Today it means

noun A thick cloud that forms near the ground; the obscurity of such a cloud.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / English foggy / fog

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