mire
Americannoun
-
mires
plural
verb (used with object)
-
mires,
present (3rd person singular)
-
mired,
past participle, past
-
miring
present participle
-
to plunge and fix in mire; cause to stick fast in mire.
-
to involve; entangle.
-
to soil with mire; bespatter with mire.
verb (used without object)
-
mires,
present (3rd person singular)
-
mired,
past participle, past
-
miring
present participle
noun
-
a boggy or marshy area
-
mud, muck, or dirt
verb
-
to sink or cause to sink in a mire
-
(tr) to make dirty or muddy
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(tr) to involve, esp in difficulties
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
miresimple
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miressimple
-
have miredperfect
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has miredperfect
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am miringprogressive
-
are miringprogressive
-
is miringprogressive
-
have been miringperfect progressive
-
has been miringperfect progressive
Past
-
miredsimple
-
had miredperfect
-
was miringprogressive
-
were miringprogressive
-
had been miringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of mire
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, from Old Norse mȳrr “bog”; cognate with Old English mēos moss
Explanation
A mire is mushy ground like quicksand, so if you feel yourself trapped in a sticky situation, consider yourself mired. One gets mired IN something — like in a dispute or in a love triangle. Mire still has its original, though less-used, sense of a slushy, muddy bit of land that gives way underfoot, also known as a quagmire. One of the most famous mires in literary history was the one haunted by the Hound of the Baskervilles in Conan Doyle's classic. Have the fibs you told your beloved come back to haunt you? You're stuck in a mire then, a treacherous situation it's going to be pretty hard to squirm out of.
Vocabulary lists containing mire
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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"Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Here are three tips to help you navigate the undead monetary mire.
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2026
After routing their bitter rivals 4-1 in November, they made the short trip up the Seven Sisters Road to inflict another humiliating defeat that pushed Tottenham deeper into the relegation mire.
From Barron's ● Feb. 22, 2026
But after reading “The Dream Factory,” you might like him better when he still had his feet in the Shoreditch mire.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
But this close to that full Senedd election, Labour appear to be in deep in the mire.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2025
Telemakhos and the herdsman scraped the packed earth floor with hoes, but made the women carry out all blood and mire.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
But there's no small amount of controversy when it comes to marshes, mires, fens, bogs, vernal pools, prairie ponds, pocosins, sloughs, small streams, seasonal streams, and rain-dependent streams.
From Salon ● May 2, 2023
As society mires its way out of the COVID-19 pandemic, health coverage has come into sharp focus for all.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2022
Rather than high-tail it to Seattle, where a new life appears to await, Jo remains in New England and mires herself in a different family’s tumult.
From New York Times ● May 26, 2022
In addition, FEO is using satellites to monitor water levels over time in EU-protected boreal wetlands called appa mires.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 17, 2021
He took pride in knowing the ways and mires, and was, after his fashion, content to be employed away from the eye of censure and the lash.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Indeed, it is almost revolutionary to see emotionally resonant teenage characters who aren’t mired in abuse, addiction or some kind of horror; leveraging dysfunction has become shorthand for “drama.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Casting Luddites as anti-technology has mired a historical labor uprising as a destructive tantrum thrown by fearful, hidebound cranks.
From Salon ● Jul. 13, 2026
He is mired in a struggle against a country with a population and a military a fraction the size of his own.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
Bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency, is mired in a big drawdown, as are most of the other major coins.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 2, 2026
At times, when a wagon was hopelessly mired, the men would walk back to Hrothgar’s hall for help.
From "Grendel" by John Gardner
“We want to be sure that this center enhances those efforts rather than duplicating them or miring them in unnecessary bureaucracy,” the Virginia Democrat said in a statement.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 22, 2021
Tesla advised against the resolution because, it said, arbitration "benefits both parties with a fair resolution and a speedier return to their respective priorities without miring them in lengthy litigation."
From Reuters ● Oct. 6, 2021
The resin puddled and pooled, miring countless creatures "like a mini–La Brea Tar Pits," says paleontologist Ryan McKellar at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada.
From Science Magazine ● May 23, 2019
Connell and Marianne are not free, and Normal People becomes a tender, bruised meditation on how two people can keep miring themselves in misery even when happiness is within their reach.
From Slate ● Apr. 15, 2019
The discoveries once again fractured the consensus about the early American history, miring it in dispute.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
