noun
quagmire
KWAG-meye-uh
noun
1
An area of soft, wet, boggy ground that traps anything that steps into it.
"The trail turned into a quagmire after days of rain."
2
A complicated, difficult situation that is hard to escape from.
"The company found itself in a legal quagmire after the botched merger."
"The war dragged on and became a political quagmire for the government."
How to Use Quagmire
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishA literal muddy bog, or — much more commonly today — a messy, hard-to-escape situation.
Common pairings
a legal quagmire
sink into a quagmire
a political quagmire
Word Forms
quagmired past tense, quagmires plural, quagmires singular
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The trail turned into a _____ after days of rain.
Etymology
Formed from "quag" (a bog or marsh) plus "mire" (wet, muddy ground), first recorded in the late 1500s; the figurative "difficult situation" meaning followed roughly two centuries later.