morass

Noun

morass (plural morasses)

1. A tract of soft, wet ground; a marsh; a fen.
   • Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.1853, John Ruskin, “Torcello”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § I, page 11
2. (figuratively) Anything that entraps or makes progress difficult.
   • The gay man must fully understand the reasons why he is as he is, and face the mass of unconscious shit put there by our society. This is the great morass between the philosophy and the actualization.1974 February 16, Ian Johnson, “The Giving Up Of Power”, in Gay Community News, volume 1, number 34, page 5
   • I wrote to Sacramento about that historical marker, and they've been kicking it around their bureaucratic morass for months.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 4, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 67