Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An area of wet, soggy, muddy ground; a bog.
- n. Deep slimy soil or mud.
- n. A disadvantageous or difficult condition or situation: the mire of poverty.
- v. To cause to sink or become stuck in or as if in mire.
- v. To hinder, entrap, or entangle as if in mire.
- v. To soil with mud or mire.
- v. To sink or become stuck in mire.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Wet, slimy soil of some depth and of yielding consistence; deep mud.
- n. Filth.
- To plunge and fix in mire; set or stall in mud; sink in mud or in a morass.
- To soil or daub with slimy mud or foul matter.
- To sink in mud; especially, to sink so deep as to be unable to move forward; stick in the mud.
- n. An ant. See pismire.
- To wonder; admire.
Wiktionary
- n. obsolete An ant.
- n. Deep mud; moist, spongy earth.
- n. An undesirable situation, a predicament.
- v. To weigh down.
- v. Cause to become stuck in mud.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete An ant.
- n. Deep mud; wet, spongy earth.
- v. To cause or permit to stick fast in mire; to plunge or fix in mud.
- v. To stick or entangle; to involve in difficulties; -- often used in the passive or predicate form.
- v. To soil with mud or foul matter.
- v. To stick in mire.
WordNet 3.0
- n. deep soft mud in water or slush
- n. a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot
- v. entrap.
- v. be unable to move further
- v. cause to get stuck as if in a mire
- n. a difficulty or embarrassment that is hard to extricate yourself from
- v. soil with mud, muck, or mire
Etymologies
- 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)
- 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Married, the mire was her portion, whatever she might do.”
“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.”
“I would argue that this "mire" in which we have so willingly immersed ourselves results from our refusal to use labels.”
“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.”
“Thus "mire" meant everything that was bodily and material; the "God sitting above the lotus" signified that”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mire’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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My . . . uh . . .
maija, maya, maia, mia, mya, maieutics, maja, miya, mialuthien, miah, maya deren, maya lin and 178 more...
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fix
set, anchor, mend, rivet, moor, clinch, emend, circumfix, fixated, cefixime, fixed cost, confix and 87 more...
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wakcy's Words
apocalypse, interlude, drome, absolution, atrocity, ruse, pristine, mason, reparable, deteriorate, pyramid, hipster and 283 more...
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i like
words to use, memorize, lavish with my affections
empyreal, quiddity, esthetic, crepitation, dénouement, feuilleton, macule, napthalene, förutse, verdure, montane, decalcomania and 105 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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everythingecstatic's Words
cadence, frenetic, eloquence, paradigm, nocturne, elusive, effervescence, soliloquy, plethora, elision, aqueous, transcend and 166 more...
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vocabulary
verisimilitude, pendulate, moxie, whimper, nary, stevedore, hubris, prodigious, super-injunction, injunction, lashings, fennel and 202 more...
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theastic's Words
cellar, stalemate, wrought, opal, tyrant, squelch, squab, linen, tartan, paisley, scope, siren and 395 more...
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Nabokov vocabulary
verisimilitude, geminate, pedantic, intervestibular, equilibrist, nictitating, anastomosis, quiddity, torus, cacahuete, undulation, pensum and 135 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Aequoria's list
affect, deleterious, nuance, pliant, verbatim, pertinent, latter, municipality, provincial, voyeuristic, circumlocution, wane and 798 more...
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Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 997 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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tomax's Words
legerdemain, yayo, extravasation, wont, faze, coxswain, concomitant, enclave, unguent, rhabdomyolysis, effluent, puerile and 432 more...
Tweets
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