quagmire

noun quag·mire \ ˈkwag-ˌmī(-ə)r , ˈkwäg- \

Updated on: 15 Apr 2018

1 : soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot

2 : a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position : predicament

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Examples of quagmire in a Sentence

A Girl of the Limberlost is a Cinderella story whose wicked stepmother, in an interesting twist, is the heroine's real mother. She is a crazy person, deranged by grief for a husband who was sucked into a quagmire before her eyes when she was pregnant with Elnora. —Janet Malcolm, New York Review of Books, 15 Jan. 2009
That was six months ago, when the Defense secretary laughingly dismissed the idea that Iraq was, or could turn into, a quagmire. But as Rumsfeld sat down last Friday morning to face Sen. John McCain, who spent six years in a Vietnamese prison, no one was laughing. —Michael Hirsh et al., Newsweek, 17 Nov. 2003
State involvement will create a vast bioethical quagmire. Even if everyone magically agrees that improving a child's memory is as valid as avoiding dyslexia, there will still be things taxpayers aren't ready to pay for—genes of unproven benefit, say, or alterations whose downsides may exceed the upside. —Robert Wright, Time, 11 Jan.1999
the party was once again facing its quadrennial quagmire: the candidate sufficiently liberal to win the nomination would be too liberal for the general election
a protracted custody dispute that became a judicial quagmire

Recent Examples of quagmire from the Web

Other Europeans run into similar quagmires with American tech companies.

— The Economist, "The EU guarantees its citizens’ data rights, in theory," 5 Apr. 2018
The latter is anyway deep in its own restructuring quagmire, while the former is most successful in very similar products as Barclays, so a takeover would be a bloodbath.

— paul j. davies, WSJ, "Barclays: Too Big For a Deal, Too Small to Compete," 26 Mar. 2018
But changing the president, though necessary, won’t be sufficient to get South Africans out of this quagmire.

— ishaan tharoor, Washington Post, "South Africa’s Zuma is out. Will things actually get better?," 15 Feb. 2018
Magic Leap now finds itself in yet another legal quagmire, this time with its senior director of global security.

— rob wile, miamiherald, "There are 8 million reasons why you should care if Magic Leap succeeds | Miami Herald," 15 Mar. 2018
But the connections between Kushner and Apollo underscore the ethical quagmire of the Trump White House.

— michael hiltzik, latimes.com, "Loan to Jared Kushner raises questions about California water project," 7 Mar. 2018
Chua sprints through her international material in a little over 100 pages before returning to the United States — which is where she gets stuck in a quagmire of her own making.

— jennifer szalai, New York Times, "American Blindness, Abroad and at Home," 21 Feb. 2018
Iran has been openly supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for some time now (much of that through its proxy Hezbollah), while Israel has tried to generally steer clear of the Syrian quagmire, at least publicly.

— ian bremmer, Time, "These 5 Proxy Battles Are Making Syria's Civil War Increasingly Complicated," 16 Feb. 2018
Yet events keep dragging Meade back into the quagmire of graft accusations that surround the party.

— nacha cattan, Bloomberg.com, "Instead of Draining It, Mexico's Presidential Candidate Gets Mired in the Swamp," 17 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'quagmire.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.