quagmire
pronunciation
How to pronounce quagmire in British English:
UK [ˈkwægmaɪə(r)]
How to pronounce quagmire in American English:
US [ˈkwæɡˌmaɪr]
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- Noun:
- a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot
Word Origin
- quagmire
- quagmire: [16] The now virtually defunct word quag denoted a ‘marsh’, particularly one with a top layer of turf that moved when you trod on it. Combination with mire (which also originally meant ‘marsh’, and is related to English moss) produced quagmire. It is not known where quag came from, but its underlying meaning is generally taken to be ‘shake, tremble’, and it may ultimately be of imitative origin.
- quagmire (n.)
- 1570s, "bog, marsh," from obsolete quag "bog, marsh" + mire (n.). Early spellings include quamyre (1550s), quabmire (1590s), quadmire (c. 1600). Extended sense of "difficult situation, inescapable bad position" is recorded by 1766; but this seems to have been not in common use in much of 19c. (absent in "Century Dictionary," 1902), but revived in a narrower sense in reference to military invasions in American English, 1965, with reference to Vietnam (popularized in the book title "The Making of a Quagmire" by David Halberstam).
Example
- 1. In short it is the opposite of a quagmire .
- 2. Now it 's a quagmire and investors are going to have to change the way they approach the market .
- 3. In 2007 two academics , john mearsheimer and stephen walt , went so far as towrite a book accusing " the lobby " of hijacking american foreign policy and luring america into the quagmire of iraq to serve israel 's interests .
- 4. The games end in not just a military quagmire but also serious fallout in u.s. domestic politics .
- 5. We can 't leave and we can 't stay : that 's the very definition of a quagmire .