Word.ws English Dictionary

knee-deep in the Big Muddy

knee-deep in the Big Muddy adjective: stuck in a predicament; mired in a difficult situation, especially one resulting from poor judgment or bad leadership.

Adjective

knee-deep in the Big Muddy

  1. (US, idiomatic) Stuck in a predicament; mired in a difficult situation, especially one resulting from poor judgment or bad leadership.
    • Polls show three-quarters of the people don't want us to invade Haiti. Nonetheless, it appears we're about to go knee-deep in the Big Muddy.1994 September 16, Cal Thomas, “Clinton should heed Gore advice”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 04 Jan 2010
    • The 40-year-old Fastow, a hot-tempered financial whiz, engineered the controversial partnerships that led to Enron's meltdown. . . . "He's knee-deep in the big muddy," Meagher says.2002 July 16, Edward Iwata, “Enron faces 'hornet's nest' of charges”, in USA Today, retrieved 04 Jan 2010

Synonyms of knee-deep in the Big Muddy

Origin of knee-deep in the Big Muddy

From Waist Deep in the Big Muddy (1967), a folk song by Pete Seeger, protesting the war in Vietnam.

Questions about knee-deep in the Big Muddy

What does knee-deep in the Big Muddy mean?
Knee-deep in the Big Muddy means stuck in a predicament; mired in a difficult situation, especially one resulting from poor judgment or bad leadership.
What part of speech is knee-deep in the Big Muddy?
Knee-deep in the Big Muddy is an adjective.

Words near knee-deep in the Big Muddy in the dictionary

  1. knee-cappings
  2. knee-caps
  3. knee-cords
  4. knee-crooking
  5. knee-deep
  6. knee-deep in the Big Muddy
  7. knee-high
  8. knee-high blackberry
  9. knee-high by the Fourth of July
  10. knee-high to a grasshopper
  11. knee-highs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knee-deep in the Big Muddy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-knee-deep in the Big Muddy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “knee-deep in the Big Muddy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knee-deep_in_the_big_muddy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.