mire
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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to plunge and fix in mire; cause to stick fast in mire.
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to involve; entangle.
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to soil with mire; bespatter with mire.
verb (used without object)
noun
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a boggy or marshy area
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mud, muck, or dirt
verb
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to sink or cause to sink in a mire
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(tr) to make dirty or muddy
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(tr) to involve, esp in difficulties
Other Word Forms
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.
Earlier on Sunday, a late Alexis Claude Maurice penalty took Augsburg to a 1-0 home win over rock-bottom Heidenheim, lifting the hosts six points clear of the relegation mire.
From Barron's • Feb. 15, 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
When Root played a limp shot to chop on in the same over, England were in the mire.
From BBC • Nov. 29, 2024
He was learning the tricky balance of spadework—deep enough to make a clean cut, but not so deep as to bury the spade head in the mire.
From "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park
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.
