a. [f. QUAG sb. or v.1 + -Y.]
1. Of ground: That shakes under the foot; full of quags; boggy, soft. Also of streams: Flowing through boggy soil.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 499. Certaine uneven and quaggie miry plots.
a. 1756. Collins, Ode Superst. Highl., 59. O’er the watery strath or quaggy moss.
1814. Scott, Wav., xvi. The path … was rough, broken, and in many places quaggy and unsound.
1867. Morris, Jason, XI. 188. A plain … with quaggy brooks cleft through.
2. Of things, esp. of the body or flesh: Soft, yielding, flabby. Also of persons in respect of their flesh, and fig.
? 16[?]. Time’s Storehouse, 26 (L.). Heate and travaile are yrkesome to the Gaules’ quaggy bodies.
1611. Cotgr., Mollasse, quaggie, swagging [etc.].
1694. Motteux, Rabelais, IV. ix. (1737), 37. A female called Pear … said to be quaggy and flabby.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), VIII. 158. Behold her, then, spreading the whole troubled bed with her huge quaggy carcase.
1806–7. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (1826), VI. 120. O the quaggy rascal!… I’d have given him a little bone to his fat.
1822–34. Good’s Stud. Med. (ed. 4), II. 680. The cells [of dead bone] being filled with a corrupt sanies or spongy caruncles, so that the whole assumes a quaggy appearance.
1851. H. Melville, Moby-Dick, xxv. 124. A mature man who uses hair-oil … has probably got a quoggy spot in him.
Comb. 1721. Ramsay, Tartana, 343. May she turn quaggy fat.
Hence Quagginess, quaggy condition.
1653. Gataker, Vind. Annot. Jer., 85. Considering the unsoundnesse and qagginesse of their [Astrologers’] grounds.
