quagmire
- 01 C2 Proficiency
n.an area of soft, wet ground that you sink into if you try to walk on it.
n.an area of soft, boggy land that yields underfoot; a marsh or bog.
Simple“Heavy rains turned the valley into a muddy quagmire that vehicles could not cross.”
In context“The hikers were forced to turn back when the trail dissolved into a treacherous quagmire of peat and standing water.”
- 02 C2 Proficiency
v.to trap someone or something in a very complicated or difficult situation.
v.to entangle or embroil someone in a complex or difficult situation. Usually appears in the passive voice or as a past participle.
Simple“The project was quagmired by constant arguments between the two managers.”
In context“The negotiations became quagmired in technical details, preventing the parties from reaching a final agreement on the core issues.”
UsageFrequently used in the passive voice ('to be quagmired in').
“It’s hard to imagine any left-field works of genius emerging from this imaginative quagmire.”
Recorded since 1579, from quag + mire. The sense “perilous, mixed up and troubled situation” has been recorded since 1775. Alternatively, the word may apparently be a variation of the earlier quakemire, from quake + mire. Compare typologically Bulgarian тресавище (tresavište), Polish trzęsawisko, Russian тряси́на (trjasína) (akin to трясти́ (trjastí)); зыбь (zybʹ), зыбу́н (zybún) (<… Proto-Slavic *zybь).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.