🕳️ Difficult situation 🌧️ Wet muddy ground

quagmire

2 8.5

Soft wet ground that gives way under your feet

noun
/ˈkwæɡˌmaɪər/

: lodazal

She steps through the quagmire of old bikes, fans, and auto parts.
a muddy quagmire

So all that's going to happen over time of that area is just like a quagmire.

Examples

Occupied by man-eating crocodiles and bloodsucking insects, and offering only a muddy quagmire for footing, the habitat definitely challenges the mobility of a pair of biologists.

Academic text (2002)
The valley below had melted into a sticky quagmire of gray-brown mud.

Fiction book (1992)
And now, sir, you have us stuck in a quagmire.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Each step seems firm, but only sinks you deeper into the quagmire.

Fiction book (1999)
The men floundered in mud, their horses caught in the quagmire.

Fiction book (1994)
It rained day after day after day, turning the whole place into a quagmire.

Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero (2018)
It had rained recently; the ground was a quagmire.

Fiction book (1997)
It had rained every day for a week, and the entire post was a quagmire of mud and filthy men.

Fiction book (1990)
One villager leads us over a mountain to a huge cave, but all we find there is faded graffiti and a floor churned into a muddy quagmire by cattle.

Academic text (2007)
After heavy rainfall, the field became a slippery quagmire that made it impossible to walk.

Synonyms

mire

vsquagmire

4 7.4

Deep soft wet ground like a bog that is hard to walk through

is the general image of sinking muddy ground rather than depth focus

slough

vsquagmire

4 8.9

A wet, muddy area of land with slow-moving water where plants grow

emphasises sinking muddy ground rather than standing or slow water

slop

vsquagmire

3 4.7

Deep soft mud that makes walking difficult

focuses on the ground itself giving way rather than mud consistency

slack

vsquagmire

1 8.6

A soft wet area of low land that sinks underfoot

is a general muddy ground idea not limited to marsh settings

morass

vsquagmire

1 9.7

Soft wet ground that is hard to walk on

is a plain everyday wording for the same sinking ground

mudhole

vsquagmire

1 1.3

A hole in the ground filled with mud

describes the wider area that gives way underfoot rather than a hole

quag

vsquagmire

Archaic

9.9

A soft, wet area of ground that sinks when you walk on it

is the longer common description for that same ground type

waterlog

vsquagmire

6.1

An area of ground filled with water and very soft to walk on

implies sinking muddy ground rather than emphasis on recent flooding

Antonyms

dry land

23 1.0

The solid ground on Earth that is not under the sea

solid ground

13 1.8

Firm land you can stand on instead of water

Compounds

political quagmire

Literature

1 8.1

A difficult political situation where people cannot agree or act

How Wet

quagmire

2 8.5

swamp

226 1.9

bog

33 4.9

marsh

64 2.6

solid ground

13 1.8

Surface Forms

quagmire singular

quagmires plural

Morphology

quagmire = quag + mire (transparent) = quag + mire

Built from two concrete words for boggy ground ('quag' + 'mire'), so the physical meaning is directly predictable from the components.

Etymology

Quagmire comes from the old words quag 'bog' and mire 'mud'. So a quagmire is a wet, soft patch of ground that can give way under your feet.