Idiom
knee-deep in the Big Muddy
Meaning
Stuck in a predicament; mired in a difficult situation, especially one resulting from poor judgment or bad leadership.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“We are knee-deep in the Big Muddy with this project.”
“You are knee-deep in the Big Muddy because you ignored the legal advice.”
“After ignoring the budget warnings for months, the manager realized we were knee-deep in the Big Muddy.”
“The team followed the wrong instructions for weeks and now they are knee-deep in the Big Muddy trying to fix the errors.”
“The administration found itself knee-deep in the Big Muddy, unable to reverse the disastrous policy decisions that had alienated their most loyal supporters.”
Examples
simple
“We are knee-deep in the Big Muddy with this project.”
“You are knee-deep in the Big Muddy because you ignored the legal advice.”
contextual
“After ignoring the budget warnings for months, the manager realized we were knee-deep in the Big Muddy.”
“The team followed the wrong instructions for weeks and now they are knee-deep in the Big Muddy trying to fix the errors.”
complex
“The administration found itself knee-deep in the Big Muddy, unable to reverse the disastrous policy decisions that had alienated their most loyal supporters.”
Origin
The phrase is a variation of the title of the 1967 folk song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" by Pete Seeger. Seeger wrote the piece as a protest against the ongoing war in Vietnam, using the image of a platoon struggling through a swamp to critique the military and political situation of the era. The lyrics and their subsequent idiomatic use preserve the specific imagery of the song's original objection to the conflict.
Key words
Related idioms
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