Both Uses of
quagmire
in
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- By much trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire.†
*
- Our city, tho' laid out with a beautiful regularity, the streets large, strait, and crossing each other at right angles, had the disgrace of suffering those streets to remain long unpav'd, and in wet weather the wheels of heavy carriages plough'd them into a quagmire, so that it was difficult to cross them; and in dry weather the dust was offensive.†
Definition:
-
(quagmire) a difficult, complex situation -- especially one from which it is difficult to escape
or more specifically: a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot