quagmire

3 definitions • 3 examples

an area of soft, wet ground that you sink into if you try to walk on it:

At the end of the game, the pitch was a real quagmire.

a difficult and dangerous situation:

Since the coup, the country has sunk deeper into a quagmire of violence and lawlessness.

a situation that can easily trap you so that you become involved with problems from which it is difficult to escape:

When I tried to get my tax situation straightened out with the government, I ran into a bureaucratic quagmire.