What does foggage mean?
Foggage is an old agricultural term, used mainly in Britain and especially in Scotland and northern England, for coarse, rank grass that is deliberately left uncut or ungrazed from late summer onward so that it stands through the winter as feed for livestock. Animals — typically sheep or cattle — are then turned out to graze this standing grass directly in the field during winter or early spring, when little other forage is available. The word derives from 'fog', an older dialect term for such aftergrowth or coarse grass, combined with the suffix '-age'; it should not be confused with weather-related fog. Historically important before modern haymaking and silage systems, foggage features frequently in estate records and agricultural improvement literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where landowners encouraged tenants to manage fields for winter keep. Though largely confined to farming circles today, it survives in discussions of traditional grazing management and remains a vivid reminder of older, self-sufficient methods of over-wintering stock on rough pasture.
nounCoarse, rank grass that is allowed to stand uncut or ungrazed in a field over winter and is grazed or fed off in the following season; also called fog grass.
- Coarse grass left standing uncut or ungrazed through the winter to be grazed off by livestock in the following spring or winter.
"The farmer turned his ewes onto the foggage to see them through the lean weeks of early spring."
"Much of the hill farm's winter feed came not from hay but from the rough foggage left standing in the lower paddocks."
"In the eighteenth-century improvers' accounts, tenants were often instructed to shut up a field in August so that it might produce good foggage for the sheep."
Foggage functions as an uncountable mass noun referring to a body of grass or grazing; quantities are expressed with words like 'fields of foggage' rather than a plural form.
"Two of the farm's best fields were shut up early to provide foggage for the winter."
Before silage bales existed, Scottish farmers kept their flocks alive all winter on 'foggage' — rank grass they deliberately left standing in the fields since autumn.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of foggage
Foggage comes from 'fog', a northern English and Scots term for coarse aftergrowth grass or second growth in a meadow, itself traditionally traced to Old Norse 'fogg'. The suffix '-age' was added to form 'foggage' in the manner of other agrarian terms denoting a yield or use of land, such as 'pasturage' and 'herbage'. The word has been established in Scottish and northern English agricultural writing since at least the early modern period and remains associated chiefly with that region.
How foggage is actually used
A technical term of British, especially Scottish and northern English, farming literature; it appears chiefly in agricultural writing rather than everyday speech and would sound unfamiliar to most American readers. It carries no connotation of beauty — the grass it names is coarse and low-grade — but within farming contexts it describes a deliberate, valued practice of winter keep.
Easily confused with foggage
As a noun in agriculture, 'fog' refers to the coarse grass itself, while 'foggage' denotes that grass as winter keep or pasture; the everyday 'fog' of misty weather is entirely unrelated in sense.