mire

plural mires

1. countableuncountableDeep mud; moist, spongy earth.

   His laden feet sand and stuck in mire; he was bedaubed with the blue-gray clay from head to foot; but he had escaped the deadly river!

   1872, Edward Everett Hale, Old and New, page 350

   1 more example

   Sow ran and squall'd, While Jack he bawl'd, And Jill join'd in the choir, Dog Ball being near, Bit sow by the ear, And threw Jack into the mire.

   1810, Jack and Jill, and old Dame Gill, York: J. Kendrew, page 12

2. countableuncountableA bog or fen; (in wetland science, specifically) a peatland which is actively forming peat, such as an active bog or fen.

   Glagolev […] measured CH₄ emission from a mire in West Siberia using a static chamber method. Similar methods had been developed and tested by Nakano et al. (2006), Fig. 1.

   2015 November 15, Lothar Mueller, Askhad K. Sheudshen, Frank Eulenstein, Novel Methods for Monitoring and Managing Land and Water Resources in Siberia, Springer, →ISBN, page 79

   Synonyms: peatland, quag

3. countableuncountableAn undesirable situation; a predicament.

   Swansea seemed to be pulling clear of trouble with five wins in their first eight games following head coach Paul Clement's appointment, but two successive defeats had dragged the Swans back into the mire.

   2017 April 2, Dafydd Pritchard, “Swansea City 0-0 Middlesbrough”, in BBC Sport, London

present singular third person mires · participle present miring · participle past mired · past mired

1. transitiveTo cause or permit to become stuck in mud; to plunge or fix in mud.

   to mire a horse or wagon

   Synonyms: bemire, enmire

2. intransitiveTo sink into mud.
3. figurativelytransitiveTo weigh down.
4. intransitiveTo soil with mud or foul matter.

   Why had I not with charitable hand Took up a beggar’s issue at my gates, Who smirch’d thus and mired with infamy, I might have said ‘No part of it is mine; This shame derives itself from unknown loins’?

   1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]

   Synonyms: bemire

plural mires

1. obsoleterareAn ant.

   Wen I lay down behine dat log I plunk masef right een one dem aunty mire nest an bout 10 million of dem leetle devil begin to heat me.

   1915, Daniel T. Trombley, Batiste of Isle La Motte, page 24

   2 more examples

   "Having been seriously interrupted by small brown ants or mires working in my cutting bench, digging holes down the side of my cuttings, thereby arresting the process of rooting. […]"

   1866, The Gardener's Monthly and Horticultural Advertiser Devoted, page 149

   The ant figures in the Bestiary, which tells us that the 'mire' is mighty; toils much in summer and in soft weather; stores wood and seed, corn and grass; in winter she is not harmed: she likes wheat, but shuns barley […]

   1939, original c. 1300, Publications - Volume 103; Volume 105, page 267

plural Mires

1. A surname.