bog down

(redirected from bogs down)

bog down

To slow down or burden someone or something. (A bog is an area of wet, muddy ground that it is difficult to walk through.) Don't bog down your brother with more suggestions—his paper is due tomorrow, so he needs to commit to a topic and just write about it! We were hoping to open the restaurant by the holidays, but we've gotten bogged down with regulations and permits.
See also: bog, down

bogged down

Burdened or impeded by something. (A bog is an area of wet, muddy land that it is difficult to walk through.) Try not to get bogged down in the details of this project—we're looking for speed more than accuracy.
See also: bog, down

bog down

to become encumbered and slow. (As if one were walking through a bog and getting stuck in the mud. Often preceded by a form of get.) The process bogged down and almost stopped. The truck got bogged down in the mud soon after it started.
See also: bog, down

*bogged down

stuck; prevented from making progress. (*Typically: be ~; get ~; become ~.) The students became bogged down with the algebra problems. The Smiths really got bogged down in decorating their house.
See also: bog, down

bog down

Become stuck, be unable to progress, as in Their research bogged down because they lacked the laboratory expertise. This expression transfers sinking into the mud of a swamp to being hampered or halted. [First half of 1900s]
See also: bog, down
References in periodicals archive ?
The structure of the play is wildly and admirably ambitious, but as the chronology plods on, the second act bogs down in plot manipulations.
It takes a fairy: Paul Rudnick's hilarious Valhalla explores gay men's historical imperative to make something pretty
The writing is crisp, highly detailed but always readable, and the narrative never bogs down in a welter of names and units.
Walsh, George. "Damage them all you can"; Robert E. Lee's army of northern Virginia
In one scenario, if energetic quarks collide at a fireball's edge, the quark heading away from the collision's center might get away while its partner bogs down in the soup of still agitated, colliding particles--the quark-gluon plasma.
Has matter's mother paid a call? (Hot Mama)
On the other hand, the story of the legal case, bogged down in bureaucracy for 26 years, bogs down the book as well.
The Lost Children of Wilder. (Book Reviews)
Johnson and Broms reject "managing by results" and embrace "managing by means." The case studies of the two companies are intriguing, but Profit Beyond Measure bogs down in overcooked language about "protecting the human niche in the ecosystem" and "nature's exquisitely parsimonious use of matter and energy," to offer but two examples.
Profit Beyond Measure: Extraordinary Results Through Attention to Work and People
Unfortunately, the clash often seems vagariously arbitrated by the most simplistic outline, as in Auerbach's Head of David L andau, 1988, or else, as in Kossoff's Red Brick School Building, Willesden, 1985, simply bogs down in pictorial mud.
"THE SCHOOL OF LONDON AND THEIR FRIENDS"
Data can crisscross the system bus multiple times as a result and this intensive processing of data bogs down system performance.
ENCRYPTION ISSUES: MOVING TOWARD HIGHER PERFORMANCE NETWORK SECURITY SUBSYSTEMS
She discusses Ronsard as well, and bogs down in an extended explication of The Shepheardes Calender.
Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England
The manuscript lacks an overarching argument or theme and at times appears directionless; why the author glides over and even skips certain topics (for example, the 1922 strike) and then bogs down in the utter detail of others remains unclear.
Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875-1925
The long biography occasionally bogs down when tracking Ginsberg's numerous trips overseas, but it comes alive when chronicling Ginsberg's creative process in the making of "Howl," "Kaddish," "Wichita Vortex Sutra," and other masterpieces.
Black Looks: Race and Representation
Reedy's book bogs down in thefinal chapters, when he remembers that his thesis is supposed to be that paralysis in the Senate is good for the country.
The U.S. Senate: paralysis or a search for consensus?
Yet his narrative never bogs down, and the reader remains interested in each struggle for an unnamed hillside.
Hickey, Michael. The Korean War; the west confronts communism
Idioms browser ?
Full browser ?