mire

mire¹ bog, mud

Etymology

The word for a bog is inherited from Middle English mire, also myre and muir,^[2][3] borrowed from Old Norse mýrr (“bog, swamp”).^{[4][5][6][7][8][2]} The OED calls the source early Scandinavian in general, comparing Icelandic mýri, Norwegian myr, Swedish myr and Danish myr.^[9] The Norse word goes back to Proto-Germanic *miuzijō,^[1][10] a variant of the base of moss and of mōs (“marsh, bog”),^{[9][11][10][5]} from Proto-Indo-European *meus- (“damp”).^[10][12] Johnson had derived it from Dutch.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

An area of swampy ground, a boggy place: 1219, in the OED,^[9] and Barnhart gives that year for the compound mirepit, a muddy hole.^[3] The word appears as muire before 1325 in a gloss on Bibbesworth, and Etymonline dates it to about 1300.^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

The word first named a place you could sink in, and the wet mud of such a place followed by about 1390, in Chaucer.^[9] From about 1387 it was also figurative, a condition hard to get out of, at first especially of sin or moral degradation.^[9] Weekley notes that allusive uses such as stick in the mire were very common in Middle English,^[14] and the Middle English Dictionary records don is in the mire, used of things at a dead stop.^[2] Chaucer used the noun six times and Gower four.^[15] The verb too was figurative at first, about 1400, to involve in difficulties; the literal sense of sinking into mud followed about 1487, according to the OED,^[9][3][10] while Barnhart dates it to 1559 and Etymonline to the 1550s.^[3][10] Johnson (1755) gave the noun as mud or dirt at the bottom of water.^[13] In Scottish and English dialect it kept the sense of a bog, and it survives in local names such as Shap Mires and in compounds like mire-drum, the bittern.^[16] James Joyce used the noun for dung (1922) and the verb for defecating (1918).^[9] In 20th-century ecology, a mire, after a specific use of the word in Swedish, became a wetland ecosystem based on peat (1946).^[9][11]

Timeline

• 1219 – a swampy place, in the compound mirepit.^[9][3]
• c. 1387 – figurative, an undesirable state hard to escape.^[9]
• c. 1390 – wet or soft mud.^[9]
• c. 1400 – verb, to involve in difficulties.^[9][3][10]
• c. 1475 – verb, to soil with mud.^[9]
• c. 1487 – verb, to plunge or set fast in mud.^[9]
• c. 1590 – verb, intransitive, to sink in mud.^[9][11]
• 1889 – verb, of mud or a bog, to hold fast.^[9][11]
• 1946 – in ecology, a wetland ecosystem based on peat.^[9][11]

Meanings

Noun

1. An area of wet, spongy ground; a bog or marsh.^[17][5][9]
2. Wet or soft mud; muck or dirt: a lane thick with mire.^[17][5][9]
3. A difficult situation that is hard to get out of: sunk in a mire of paperwork.^[5][9]
4. (ecology) A wetland ecosystem based on peat.^[9][11]

Verb

1. To cause to stick fast in mud; usually in the passive: The truck was mired to its axles.^[17][5][9]
2. To involve in difficulties: The talks were mired in old disputes.^[17][5][9]
3. To soil with mud or dirt; figuratively, to defile.^[17][5][9]
4. To sink into mud or become stuck; in later use a United States regional sense, often with down.^[9][17][11]

Word family

• miry
• bemire
• quagmire
• unmired
• miriness

mire² ant

Etymology

The word for an ant is inherited from Middle English mire,^[2][18][9] from the Germanic base of Middle Dutch miere (modern Dutch mier) and Middle Low German mire.^[9][11] The OED takes it as probably cognate with Danish myre and Swedish myra, and with maur in a different ablaut grade.^[9][2] Whether it existed in Old English is unclear: the Middle English Dictionary takes it as probably Old English, comparing the nickname Mȳran-hēafod in the Peterborough Chronicle under 1010,^[2] but the OED says that this is now usually read as a variant of mare and that no other Old English evidence exists.^[9] Words for "ant" in non-Germanic languages, such as Ancient Greek μύρμηξ (múrmēx) and Latin formīca, may be related but cannot come from a single base.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

An ant: before 1300, in the Middle English Bestiary (Ðe mire is magti, the ant is mighty).^[2][9] Surnames such as Herewardus le Mire (1212) may be earlier records, although they may instead show an Anglo-Norman word for a physician.^[9][2]

Semantic evolution

The simple word is recorded only until 1475,^[9][11] and it survives only as the second element of pismire,^[11][9] although Johnson (1755) still listed it.^[13]

Timeline

• 1212 – perhaps as a surname, le Mire.^[9][2]
• before 1300 – an ant (obsolete after 1475).^[9][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (obsolete, 1300–1475) An ant.^[9][2][11]