Word.ws English Dictionary

stuck in the mud

stuck in the mud adjective: stuck, unable to progress.

Adjective

stuck in the mud (comparative more stuck in the mud, superlative most stuck in the mud)

  1. (idiomatic) Stuck, unable to progress.
    • Gorbachev needed to end it because the cost of defence, rising blindly as the army ordered more and more missiles, was bankrupting the Soviet Union. Its economy, stuck in the mud and mired in congenital secrecy, couldn't cope anyway, but the burden of defence profligacy was forcing it to its knees.2011 February 5, Peter Preston, “The Dead Hand by David E Hoffman – review”, in The Guardian
    • The other studios joining the celebrations might crank up the volume, but perhaps it's the clouds louring overhead – stuck-in-the-mud creativity, uncertain revenue streams, growing global competition – that are responsible for the muted jubilation.2012 October 2, Phil Hoad, “Bollywood centenary: make a song and dance about it”, in The Guardian

Noun

stuck in the mud (uncountable)

  1. A variant of the children's game of touch or tag in which a tagged player stands with arms and legs apart, and people crawling under such a player cannot be tagged.

Forms of stuck in the mud

comparativemore stuck in the mud
superlativemost stuck in the mud

Questions about stuck in the mud

What does stuck in the mud mean?
Stuck in the mud means stuck, unable to progress.
What part of speech is stuck in the mud?
Stuck in the mud can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near stuck in the mud in the dictionary

  1. stuck in one's gizzard
  2. stuck in one's ways
  3. stuck in someone's craw
  4. stuck in someone's gullet
  5. stuck in someone's throat
  6. stuck in the mud
  7. stuck in the Stone Age
  8. stuck in time
  9. stuck it out
  10. stuck it to
  11. stuck it to the man

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stuck in the mud (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-us-stuck in the mud.oga.

Cite this entry: “stuck in the mud.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stuck_in_the_mud. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.