Mary Roach
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The Swampy History of Morass
We won't swamp you with details: morass comes from the Dutch word moeras, which itself derives from an Old French word, maresc, meaning “marsh.” Morass has been part of English for centuries, and in its earliest uses was a synonym of swamp or marsh. (That was the sense Robert Louis Stevenson used when he described Long John Silver emerging from “a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass” in Treasure Island.) Imagine walking through a thick, muddy swamp: it's easy to compare such slogging to an effort to extricate yourself from a sticky situation. By the mid-19th century, morass had gained a figurative sense, and could refer to any predicament that was as murky, confusing, or difficult to navigate as a literal swamp.
Synonyms
Examples of morass in a Sentence
Jaime Moore-Carrillo, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 26 Mar. 2024
Any yet somehow, thanks to edit suite magic (Leonardo Daniel Bianchi takes the editorial credit), some kind of thematic coherence emerges from the morass of material.
—Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 Feb. 2024
The bureaucratic morass injects uncertainty into an event that annually draws more than 4,000 participants, including teams consisting of employees from Disney, Warner Bros. and Netflix, along with several actors, musicians and celebrities.
—Matt Hamilton, Los Angeles Times, 20 Sep. 2023
Europe’s Debilitating Energy Costs Who or what is to blame for Europe’s current economic morass?
—Tilak Doshi, Forbes, 13 Aug. 2023
Higher education is failing in its key roles and is devolving into an unrecognizable morass.
—Letter Writers, Twin Cities, 4 Jan. 2024
Twice yearly, though, the county is battered by weeks of torrential rain, which drown farm fields and transform roads into impassable morasses.
—WIRED, 23 Dec. 2023
They are stuck in an adoption limbo — a morass of paperwork and politics, fraught with the ethical weight of international adoptions and the fierce conviction of two people who don’t want a little girl to be abandoned a second time.
—Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, 20 July 2023
That was always part of the job: to root around for authenticity in the morass of a disease.
—Katie Engelhart, New York Times, 3 Jan. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'morass.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Morass.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morass. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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