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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. An area of wet, soggy, muddy ground; a bog.
  2. n. Deep slimy soil or mud.
  3. n. A disadvantageous or difficult condition or situation: the mire of poverty.
  4. v. To cause to sink or become stuck in or as if in mire.
  5. v. To hinder, entrap, or entangle as if in mire.
  6. v. To soil with mud or mire.
  7. v. To sink or become stuck in mire.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Wet, slimy soil of some depth and of yielding consistence; deep mud.
  2. n. Filth.
  3. To plunge and fix in mire; set or stall in mud; sink in mud or in a morass.
  4. To soil or daub with slimy mud or foul matter.
  5. To sink in mud; especially, to sink so deep as to be unable to move forward; stick in the mud.
  6. n. An ant. See pismire.
  7. To wonder; admire.

Wiktionary

  1. n. obsolete An ant.
  2. n. Deep mud; moist, spongy earth.
  3. n. An undesirable situation, a predicament.
  4. v. To weigh down.
  5. v. Cause to become stuck in mud.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. obsolete An ant.
  2. n. Deep mud; wet, spongy earth.
  3. v. To cause or permit to stick fast in mire; to plunge or fix in mud.
  4. v. To stick or entangle; to involve in difficulties; -- often used in the passive or predicate form.
  5. v. To soil with mud or foul matter.
  6. v. To stick in mire.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. deep soft mud in water or slush
  2. n. a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot
  3. v. entrap.
  4. v. be unable to move further
  5. v. cause to get stuck as if in a mire
  6. n. a difficulty or embarrassment that is hard to extricate yourself from
  7. v. soil with mud, muck, or mire

Etymologies

  1. From Old Norse mýrr, from Proto-Germanic *miuzijō, whence also Swedish myr, Icelandic mýri, Dutch *mier (in placenames, for example Mierlo). Related to Proto-Germanic *meusan, whence Old English mēos, and Proto-Germanic *musan, whence Old English mos (English moss). (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English, from Old Norse mȳrr, bog. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “The idea that if we create a fairer more forgiving society with a fully supportive social system the disenfranchised will lift themselves oput of the mire is frankly just not true anymore.”

    Final Fantasy « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG

  • “The king's ministers and the false prophets who misled him. sunk in ... mire -- proverbial for, Thou art involved by "thy friends '" counsels in inextricable difficulties.”

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

  • “Page 10 to the intoxicating cup for stimulus to artificial excitement, and drowned all seasonable delight in mire, and a poison that not the dumb animals will swallow.”

    God Seen Above All National Calamities

  • “Even the worst drunks that hang out at the local bar here know that Fox news is a bunch of worn out republican journalist grasping at straws while sinking in mire.”

    Think Progress » Fox News Slams Colbert: ‘Inappropriate,’ ‘Over the Line,’ ‘Not Very Funny’

  • “That men are contented to be as pigs in the mire is the clearest evidence that their crowns and dignities have been burnt away.”

    The Epistles of St. Peter

  • “Married, the mire was her portion, whatever she might do.”

    Diana of the Crossways — Volume 2

  • “With calls for Senator Clinton to abandon what is now seen as little more than a schismatic adventure that risks a fracture along a racial fault-line dividing the Democratic Party just as the Whig Party was fractured by race, some have deduced that the probable motive driving the sinking campaign deeper into the mire is a misplaced belief some attribute to James Carville that they can torpedo Obama's presidential ambitions; survive the disaster of his loss to McCain and prevail as owners of the Democratic Party through the agency of the now discredited Democratic Leadership Council.”

    Michael Carmichael: The Political Titanic

  • “I would argue that this "mire" in which we have so willingly immersed ourselves results from our refusal to use labels.”

    What is an Atheist?

  • “He is like a diamond embedded in dross and mire which is suddenly separated from the overlying substances, and brought to the surface, clear and brilliant; it is not only a purified and magnificent stone; what really transforms it is the sun, which can now be reflected in it and make it sparkle.”

    Spontaneous Activity in Education

  • “Thus "mire" meant everything that was bodily and material; the "God sitting above the lotus" signified that”

    Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries

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‘mire’ has been looked up 4005 times, loved by 9 people, added to 65 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 6.