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.
Examples of morass in a Sentence
Forrest Claypool, Chicago Tribune, 14 Mar. 2025
The legal morass created by this scheme doesn't end there.
—Faisal Kutty, Newsweek, 12 Mar. 2025
There's this huge morass of gray that both Mark and Cecil [Walton Goggins], and most of our characters, exist in.
—Nick Romano, EW.com, 6 Mar. 2025
Shapiro, who launched crisis PR firm 10th Avenue Consulting in 2015 after his lengthy tenure in the federal government, would seem an unconventional choice for Lively given that the spiraling legal morass has no obvious political ties.
—Tatiana Siegel, Variety, 28 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for morass
Cite this Entry
“Morass.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morass. Accessed 9 May. 2025.
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