Merse
/mɛrs/noun
A Scots and northern English word for low-lying, marshy land, especially beside a river.
Did you know?Merse preserves an old Germanic landscape word whose wider Indo-European ancestry is linked to words for seas, lakes, and other bodies of water.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*móri-
“A body of water, especially a lake or sea”
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*mariskaz
“Marshy or belonging to marshland”
Old English
Old English
mersc
“Marsh or fen”
Middle English
Middle English
mersh
“Marshland or wet ground”
15th–16th Century
Scots
merse
“Low-lying land beside a river, particularly fertile marshland”
Modern English
Scots/English dialect
merse
“Marshy lowland, especially river meadow”