bemire

Verb

bemire (third-person singular simple present bemires, present participle bemiring, simple past and past participle bemired)

1. (archaic) To soil with mud or a similar substance.
   • The Minde, constrain’d the Bodies want to feele,
     Makes Salves of Earth the Bodies hurt to heale,
     Which doe the Mind bemire with thoughts vnfitt;1603, John Davies, The Discovery of the Little World, with the Government Thereof, Oxford, page 118
   • Ah me! while I fond wretch indulge my Dreams,
     Winds blast my Flow’rs, and Boars bemire my Streams.1684, “The Second Eclogue”, in Nahum Tate, transl., edited by John Dryden, Miscellany Poems, London: Jacob Tonson, page 13
2. (archaic) To immerse or trap in mire.
   • True, there are by the direction of the Law-giver, certain good and subs[tantial] Steps, placed even through the very midst of this Slough; but at such a time as this place doth much spue out [its filth] as it doth against change of weather, these steps are hardly seen; or if they be, Men through...1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, London: Nath. Ponder, pages 13–14
   • In two of the morasses there was not depth sufficient to have bemired an animal of such magnitude and strength […]1802, Rembrandt Peale, Account of the Skeleton of the Mammoth, a Non-Descript Carnivorous Animal of Immense Size Found in America, London, page 38
3. (figuratively) To stain or mar, as with infamy or disgrace; to tarnish; to sully.
   • "We have to stop him at any cost. That is the way our Cause gets bemired. Some villain who knows nothing about it comes into it for money and so the labours of the honest mediums get discounted."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019