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
-
(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
-
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
Lesser biographies pick sides; Mangold trusts us to find our own path through the mire, while noting the particular risk of being a wunderkind hoisted up into a deity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 24, 2025
I wallowed in a mire of helplessness and despair.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
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
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
What was once a coastal bay is now dotted with small lakes, peat bogs, and mires with white sphagnum mosses and grassy sedge plants.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 13, 2021
The hobbits soon found that what had looked like one vast fen was really an endless network of pools, and soft mires, and winding half-strangled water-courses.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
The artificial body parts are not cheap, especially for Venezuelans living in a country mired in economic crisis.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
The housing market has been mired in a yearslong slump, with the rise in mortgage rates in 2022 putting an end to a pandemic-era buying spree.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Mora has been mired in a contract dispute with Giumarra Brothers Fruit Co. revolving around his nectarine crop for the last few years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2026
Bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency, is mired in a big drawdown, as are most of the other major coins.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 2, 2026
I’m on my couch, still mired in Lord of the Flies.
From "Everything, Everything" by Nicola Yoon
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
Although the law’s opponents claimed it would cover trivial matters and end up miring federal courts in divorce, the number of claims were modest in scope and the abuse serious.
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2021
He dropped to 24-43 in four seasons in Jacksonville, falling a few plays shy of the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 2017 and then miring near the bottom of the league since.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 3, 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
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.
