MIRE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Mire

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/maɪr/ /mˈaɪər/ Listen

noun

Mire n. An ant. (Obs.) See Pismire.

Mire n. Deep mud; wet, spongy earth. "He his rider from the lofty steed Would have cast down and trod in dirty mire."

Mire crow (Zool.), the pewit, or laughing gull. (Prov. Eng.)

Mire drum, the European bittern. (Prov. Eng.)

verb

Mire v. t. (past & past part. mired; pres. part. miring)

To cause or permit to stick fast in mire; to plunge or fix in mud; as, to mire a horse or wagon.

Hence: To stick or entangle; to involve in difficulties; often used in the passive or predicate form; as, we got mired in bureaucratic red tape and it took years longer than planned.

To soil with mud or foul matter. "Smirched thus and mired with infamy."

Mire v. i. To stick in mire.

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Etymology of 'Mire'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books

... Punahou. He had sat at meat with lords and chiefs and the high representatives of alien powers who protected the interests of traders and missionaries. Such had been Kapalei. But now, as Koolau had said, he was a hunted rat, a creature outside the law, sunk so deep in the mire of human horror that he was above the law as well as beneath it. His face was featureless, save for gaping orifices and for the lidless eyes that ...

— The House of Pride • Jack London

... increase in number, make this city poorer, morally and spiritually; they drag it down and down into the mire. This is not American civilization; it is the rottenness of Gomorrah. This is not Democracy—it is savagery. It shows the glutton hunt for the Dollar with no thought for aught else under the sun or over the earth. It is decadence of the spirit in ...

— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... ones 'tis a character we never shall want. Oh! it infests the court, the camp, the cabinet; it infests the Church. Go where you will, in every quarter, in every profession, you see a Shimei following the wheels of the fortunate through thick mire and clay. Haste, Shimei, haste! or thou wilt be undone forever. Shimei girdeth up his loins and speedeth after him. Behold the hand which governs everything takes the wheel from his chariot, so that he who driveth, driveth on ...

— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... your son)—Ver. 898. "Mire finxit." He sarcastically uses the same word, "fingo," which Chremes himself ...

— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... the clouds had discharged their burden, and, meanwhile, the dust on the road became kneaded into mire, and the horses' task of pulling the britchka heavier and heavier. Also, Chichikov had taken alarm at his continued failure to catch sight of Sobakevitch's country house. According to his calculations, it ought to have been reached long ago. He gazed about him on every side, but the ...

— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

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