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Mire

//ˈmaɪɚ// name, noun, verb

Definitions

Proper Noun

1
A surname.

Noun

1
Deep mud; moist, spongy earth. countable, uncountable
"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!"
2
An ant. obsolete, rare
""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. […]""
3
a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot wordnet
4
A bog or fen; (in wetland science, specifically) a peatland which is actively forming peat, such as an active bog or fen. countable, uncountable
"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."
5
a difficulty or embarrassment that is hard to extricate yourself from wordnet

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6
An undesirable situation; a predicament. countable, uncountable
"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."
7
deep soft mud in water or slush wordnet

Verb

1
To cause or permit to become stuck in mud; to plunge or fix in mud. transitive
"to mire a horse or wagon"
2
soil with mud, muck, or mire wordnet
3
To sink into mud. intransitive
4
be unable to move further wordnet
5
To weigh down. figuratively, transitive

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6
cause to get stuck as if in a mire wordnet
7
To soil with mud or foul matter. intransitive
"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’?"
8
entrap wordnet

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English mire, a borrowing from Old Norse mýrr, from Proto-Germanic *miuzijō, whence also Swedish myr, Norwegian myr, Icelandic mýri, Dutch *mier (in placenames, for example Mierlo). Related to Proto-Germanic *meusą, whence Old English mēos, and Proto-Germanic *musą, whence Old English mos (English moss).

Etymology 2

Etymology 3

From Middle English mire, from Old English *mȳre, *mīere, from Proto-West Germanic *miurijā, from Proto-Germanic *miurijǭ (“ant”). Cognate to Old Norse maurr, Danish myre, Middle Dutch miere (“ant”) (Dutch mier). All probably from Proto-Indo-European *morwi- (“ant”), whence also cognate to Latin formīca.

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