mire
/mʌɪə
/noun
1A stretch of swampy or boggy ground: acres of land had been reduced to a mire...
- One side was fence, the other a swamp, a mire skewered by rotting birch trunks bracketed by hard tinder fungi.
- As the annual flood inundates the delta, the cats are forced to cope with expanses of water that fragment their homes into a series of small islands and their hunting ground into dangerous, watery mires.
- Open water falling within the delineation was discounted, but mire and swamp forest were not.
1.1 [mass noun] Soft mud or dirt: the roads retained their winter mire...
- Besides removal of mud and mire which had accumulated since long at the bottom of the spring a number of gold ornaments and silver pieces offered to the Goddess were recovered.
- Quickly we hauled the canoe ashore and began to follow on foot, but the muck and mire made a chase on land impossible.
- It has been likened to the lotus, whose exquisite, fragrant blossom grows out of the muck and mire.
Synonyms
mud, slime, sludge, dirt, filth, ooze, muck
1.2 Ecology A wetland area or ecosystem based on peat.Human-induced sinking raised bogs and commercial peat cutting contributed to a process whereby the extensive raised bogs and mires became large freshwater lakes, easily covering more than 50 percent of the former land....
- These are classed as areas of county importance for their wildlife, which include ancient woodlands, species-rich grasslands and meadows, wetlands and mires.
- This implies that throughout the development of each mire, base level rose and accommodation rates increased.
Synonyms
swamp, bog, morass, peat bog, quagmire, quag, slough, sump, quicksand, fen, fenland, swampland, marshland, wetland, salt marsh, saltings, salina;
North American bayou, moor
2A complicated or unpleasant situation from which it is difficult to extricate oneself: the service is sinking in the mire of its own regulations...
- Its good, its proactive and there's no time to sink into the mire of self doubt and hopelessness if you are expending energy (preferably on inanimate objects).
- It did eventually sink into a murky mire of sickening sentimentality that left me feeling nauseous, but hey, that's just me.
- Meanwhile, they are six clear of Rangers who sank further into the mire yesterday when they could only get a draw at home to Inverness Caley Thistle.
verb [with object]
1Cause to become stuck in mud: sometimes a heavy truck gets mired down...
- A trip around a field to investigate moisture levels resulted in a four-wheel drive all terrain vehicle getting mired down.
- In them are the bones of hundreds of dinosaurs, including skeletons of giant brontosaurs which were mired in soft mud.
- They marched along the banners and got mired in the mud, screaming for help.
Synonyms
get bogged down, sink, sink down, stick in the mud
1.1Cover or spatter with mud: the horse waded through the red mud that mired it to its hocks
Synonyms
dirty, soil, muddy, begrime, spatter, smear, make muddy/dirty, cake with dirt/soil
1.2 (mire someone/thing in) Involve someone or something in (a difficult situation): the economy is mired in its longest recession since the war...
- Even then, change will be difficult because the team is mired in a ‘the future is now’ philosophy, even when the present is bleak and unpromising.
- They always believe themselves to be in the right, no matter how much wickedness they are mired in.
- The flyover projects are stuck with no sign of a resolution of whatever conflicts they are mired in.
Synonyms
entangle, tangle up, embroil, enmesh, catch up, mix up, involve, bog down
Origin
Middle English: from Old Norse mýrr, of Germanic origin; related to moss.