Also 6, 8 quage, 7 quagg(e. [Related to QUAG v.; cf. QUAB, QUAW, and see QUAGMIRE.] A marshy or boggy spot, esp. one covered with a layer of turf that shakes or yields when walked on.
1589. Ive, Fortif., 16. Where you finde quicke sands, quages, and such like.
1657. Howell, Londinop., 342. Moorfields, which in former times, was but a fenny quagge, or moore.
a. 1677. Barrow, Serm., Wks. 1716, III. 143. The latter walk upon a bottomless Quag into which unawares they may slump.
1784. Cowper, Tiroc., 253. We keep the road, Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells.
1883. Besant, All in a Garden fair, I. ii. (1885), 19. There are pools in the forest … there are marshy places and quags.
fig. 1888. Ch. Times, 27 Jan., 68/3. All who are trying to find a way out of the Vatican quag, without turning Protestants.
b. attrib. and Comb., as quag-brain, -kind, -water.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills (1872), II. 244. Tho’ Law and Justice were of slender growth Within his quag Brain.
1772. Walker, in Phil. Trans., LXII. 124. It was mostly of the quag kind, which is a sort of moss covered at top with a turf of heath and coarse aquatic grasses.
a. 1870. D. G. Rossetti, Poems (1870), 252. I … fouled my feet in quag-water.
