mare's-nest
Americannoun
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something imagined to be an extraordinary discovery but proving to be a delusion or a hoax.
The announced cure for the disease was merely another mare's-nest.
-
an extremely confused, entangled, or disordered place, situation, etc..
We just moved in, and the place is a mare's-nest.
noun
-
a discovery imagined to be important but proving worthless
-
a disordered situation
Etymology
Origin of mare's-nest
First recorded in 1610–20
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.
The behavior Bezos describes in his blog post does, though, create a mare’s-nest of issues regarding the portions of the nonprosecution agreement in which AMI promised to cooperate fully with the government.
From Slate • Feb. 8, 2019
And at week's end the Allis-Chalmers dispute was still a mare's-nest.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the 22 hours that followed, the world press collected a mare's-nest of wild reports from Apia.
From Time Magazine Archive
I am the more sorry because I confess I greatly regret that the mare's-nest of the Russian Memorandum of 1844 should remain unpulled to pieces.
From Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. In Two Volumes. Volume II. by Laughton, John Knox
Yet suppose, after all, I had found a mare’s-nest!
From My Friend Smith A Story of School and City Life by Reed, Talbot Baines
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.
