mire
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Deep soft mud in water or slush.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
myrIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmaɪɹ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Deep soft mud in water or slush
Deep mud; moist, spongy earth.
An undesirable situation; a predicament.
A bog or fen; (in wetland science, specifically) a peatland which is actively forming peat, such as an active bog or fen.
verb
transitive
To cause or permit to become stuck in mud; to plunge or fix in mud.
intransitive
To sink into mud.
intransitive
To soil with mud or foul matter.
transitivefigurative
To weigh down.
Cause to get stuck as if in a mire
Soil with mud, muck, or mire
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Deep soft mud in water or slush
Used this way, mire is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use mire
- “The country is still trying to climb out of the mire left by its previous president.”noun
- “Our people should not be mired in the past.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.