mare's-nest
Americannoun
-
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
In the 22 hours that followed, the world press collected a mare's-nest of wild reports from Apia.
From Time Magazine Archive
And at week's end the Allis-Chalmers dispute was still a mare's-nest.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thoroughly disgruntled, more than half persuaded he had staked a claim for a mare's-nest, he took the road in the heat of a day even more oppressive than its yesterday.
From Alias the Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance
We shall work the case out independently, and leave this fellow Jones to exult over any mare's-nest which he may choose to construct.
From The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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.
