Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A quagmire.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A shaking, marshy soil; a quagmire.
  • noun Synonyms See marsh.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun rare A quagmire.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun quagmire

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps variant of Middle English quabbe, from Old English *cwabba.]

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Examples

  • Awesome and all of you nay sayers can just go and re-watch the Christmas special if you need a reminder as to how bad it could have been … R2 says: Whreooouuuv! quag

    EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Clone Wars trailer leaked 2008

  • It's time for true Conservatives to admit that the Battle in Iraq has ground to a halt and recognize that we should support pulling back militarily from the quag in which it has become mired.

    Sound Politics: Democrats May Be in a Quandary on Iraq 2007

  • It’s time for true Conservatives to admit that the Battle in Iraq has ground to a halt and recognize that we should support pulling back militarily from the quag in which it has become mired.

    Sound Politics: Liberals Are About to Go Apoplectic 2006

  • Whether he was choked with gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the Evil

    Edinburgh Picturesque Notes 2005

  • When once I had seen from the leads of our house the quag of reeking life around, the stubs and snags of chimney-pots, the gashes among them entitled streets, and the broken blains called houses, I was quite ashamed of paying any thing to become a Christian.

    Erema Richard Doddridge 2004

  • Then I flung my body suddenly backward against the squelching quag, and, grabbing wildly behind my head, laid hold of her fetlock.

    Seven Pillars of Wisdom Thomas Edward 2003

  • By midnight we had crossed the Ghadaf and the quag felt too awful for further progress.

    Seven Pillars of Wisdom Thomas Edward 2003

  • They belonged to what seemed a giant body, sunk up to the shoulders in a quag.

    The Courts of Chaos Zelazny, Roger 1978

  • Rushing wind and lashing rain; pale gleams of a fitful moon to show swaying trees that tossed wild arms to heaven, and a splashing quag below, mud and wind-swept pools, all lost again in the swirling dark.

    Peregrine's Progress Jeffery Farnol 1915

  • Even under these circumstances imagination, as though rebelling against the conditions of sunshine and summer then maintaining, leaped to picture Mên Scryfa under the black screaming of winter storm or rising darkly upon deep snows; casting a transitory shadow over a waste ghastly blue under flashes of lightning, or throbbing to its deep roots when thunder roared over the moor and the levin brand hissed unseen into quag and fen.

    Lying Prophets Eden Phillpotts 1911

Comments

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  • quag-mire

    March 22, 2009