Home › Glossary › Letter F

foggage

Farming
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Foggage is coarse grass or later growth left in a field after harvesting or grazing, traditionally reserved as feed for livestock.

Detailed Definition
This is an agricultural word for rough grass or leftover field growth. Burns uses it to describe the mouse’s ruined nest being covered by winter debris and vegetation.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Scots pastoral verse, “foggage green” means aftermath grass left for cattle to graze after a hay or grain crop; Robert Burns uses rural Scots vocabulary to make fields, seasons, and farm hardship concrete rather than abstract; “The kye found foggage after harvest” would show livestock feeding on regrowth in late summer or autumn; A contemporary rural poem might contrast “foggage in the old field” with industrial feed, using the word to preserve local agricultural knowledge
Additional Notes
“foggage” is a specialized rural term in the poem and is not common modern vocabulary.; Found in the poem, To a Mouse by Robert Burns
Also Known As
moss lichen ground cover
Skip to main content