Word.ws English Dictionary

mire

/ˈmaɪə/US/ˈmaɪɚ/

mire noun: deep mud; moist, spongy earth.

Noun (1)

mire (countable and uncountable, plural mires)

  1. Deep mud; moist, spongy earth.
    • Sow ran and squall'd,
      While Jack he bawl'd,
      And Jill join'd in the choir,
      Dog Ball being near,
      Bit sow by the ear,
      And threw Jack into the mire.1810, Jack and Jill, and old Dame Gill, York: J. Kendrew, page 12
    • His laden feet sand and stuck in mire; he was bedaubed with the blue-gray clay from head to foot; but he had escaped the deadly river!1872, Edward Everett Hale, Old and New, page 350
  2. A bog or fen; (in wetland science, specifically) a peatland which is actively forming peat, such as an active bog or fen.
    • Glagolev […] measured CH₄ emission from a mire in West Siberia using a static chamber method. Similar methods had been developed and tested by Nakano et al. (2006), Fig. 1.2015 November 15, Lothar Mueller, Askhad K. Sheudshen, Frank Eulenstein, Novel Methods for Monitoring and Managing Land and Water Resources in Siberia, Springer, →ISBN, page 79
    Synonyms:
    peatland, quag
  3. An undesirable situation; a predicament.
    • Swansea seemed to be pulling clear of trouble with five wins in their first eight games following head coach Paul Clement's appointment, but two successive defeats had dragged the Swans back into the mire.2017 April 2, Dafydd Pritchard, “Swansea City 0-0 Middlesbrough”, in BBC Sport, London

Verb

mire (third-person singular simple present mires, present participle miring, simple past and past participle mired)

  1. (transitive) To cause or permit to become stuck in mud; to plunge or fix in mud.
    • to mire a horse or wagon
    Synonyms:
    bemire, enmire
  2. (intransitive) To sink into mud.
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To weigh down.
  4. (intransitive) To soil with mud or foul matter.
    • Why had I not with charitable hand
      Took up a beggar’s issue at my gates,
      Who smirch’d thus and mired with infamy,
      I might have said ‘No part of it is mine;
      This shame derives itself from unknown loins’?1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    Synonyms:
    bemire

Noun (2)

mire (plural mires)

  1. (obsolete, rare) An ant.
    • "Having been seriously interrupted by small brown ants or mires working in my cutting bench, digging holes down the side of my cuttings, thereby arresting the process of rooting. […]"1866, The Gardener's Monthly and Horticultural Advertiser Devoted, page 149
    • Wen I lay down behine dat log I plunk masef right een one dem aunty mire nest an bout 10 million of dem leetle devil begin to heat me.1915, Daniel T. Trombley, Batiste of Isle La Motte, page 24

Proper noun capitalized: Mire

Mire (plural Mires)

  1. A surname.

mire meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

mire in Hindi

deep mud
कीचड़ kīcaṛ

mire in Tamil

சேறு

mire in Urdu

دلدل, کیچڑ, دلدل میں پھنسنا

mire in Bengali

কাদা, কর্দমাক্ত জমি, জটিল অবস্থা
More languagesFewer languages
mire in Telugu
అడుసు aḍusu, గుమ్మి gummi
mire in Malayalam
ചെളി, ചള്ള, ദുഃസ്ഥിതി
mire in Kannada
ಕೊಚ್ಚೆ, ರೊಚ್ಚು
mire in Punjabi
چکڑ cikkaṛ
mire in Sanskrit
पङ्क paṅka
mire in Persian
گلزار gelzâr, باتلاق bâtlâq

Examples of mire in a sentence

  • Indeed, they are mired in corruption, incompetence and skewed to China’s strategic interests.
  • From the beginning her mini-campaign, with its many missteps and fumblings, seem mired in confusion.
  • The paludic soils, coded "Pt," characterize peat accumulated in fen, transitional, or bog mire ecosystems.

All 19 example sentences with mire

Synonyms of mire

Forms of mire

Noun
pluralmires
Verb
third-person singular presentmires
present participlemiring
past participlemired
pastmired
Proper noun
pluralMires

Past tense of mire: mired

Plural of mire: mires

Origin of mire

From Middle English mire, a borrowing from Old Norse mýrr, from Proto-Germanic *miuzijō, whence also Swedish myr, Norwegian myr, Icelandic mýri, Dutch *mier (in placenames, for example Mierlo). Related to Proto-Germanic *meusą, whence Old English mēos, and Proto-Germanic *musą, whence Old English mos (English moss).

From Middle English mire, myre, from Old English *mīere, from Proto-West Germanic *miurijā, from Proto-Germanic *miurijǭ (“ant”), from Proto-Indo-European *morwís (“ant”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian miir (“ant”), Dutch mier (“ant”), Low German Miere (“ant”), Danish myre (“ant”), Faroese meyra (“ant”), Icelandic and Norwegian Bokmål maur (“ant”), Norwegian Nynorsk maur, møvver (“ant”), Swedish myra (“ant”), Crimean Gothic miera (“ant”), Finnish muurahainen (“ant”), Ingrian muurahain (“ant”); also Breton merien (“ants”), Cornish moryon (“ants”), Old Irish moirb (“ant”), Welsh mŷr (“ant”), Latin formīca, furmīca (“ant”), Greek μερμήγκι (mermígki), μυρμήγκι (myrmígki, “ant”), Albanian morr (“louse; aphid”), Belarusian мура́шка (muráška, “ant”), Bulgarian мрав (mrav), мра́вка (mrávka, “ant”), Czech brabenec, mravenec (“ant”), Kashubian marwa, mrówka (“ant”), Lower Sorbian mroja (“ant”), Macedonian мра́ва (mráva), мра́вка (mrávka, “ant”), Pannonian Rusyn брамушка (bramuška), ґрамушка (gramuška, “ant”), Polish mrówka (“ant”), Russian мураве́й (muravéj, “ant”), Serbo-Croatian мрав, mrav (“ant”), Slovak mravec (“ant”), Slovene mravlja (“ant”), Ukrainian мура́ха (muráxa, “ant”)...

Words formed from mire

Words that rhyme with mire

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mire

What does mire mean?
Mire means deep mud; moist, spongy earth.
What is mire in Hindi?
Mire in Hindi is कीचड़ (kīcaṛ). See Mire meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is mire?
Mire can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mire?
Mire is pronounced /ˈmaɪə/ (UK).
What is the plural of mire?
The plural of mire is mires.

Words near mire in the dictionary

  1. Mirdamadi
  2. mirdametinib
  3. Mirdasid
  4. mirdle
  5. mirdles
  6. mire
  7. mired
  8. mireds
  9. Mirehouse
  10. mirek
  11. mireks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mire (page history and authors); Mire (page history and authors); mire (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mire (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mire (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); అడుసు (Telugu) (page history and authors); mire (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mire (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); چکڑ (Punjabi) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-mire.wav.

Cite this entry: “mire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.