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morass

US/məˈɹæs/
nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,968 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: morasses

A morass is boggy ground, or a situation you cannot get free of. A legal morass, sink into a morass, a morass of paperwork.

The figurative use has almost taken over, and what it adds to a mess is the sense of sinking: a morass gets worse the more you struggle. The word is Dutch and is a relative of marsh.

Marshelec · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of morass

  1. 1nounmorassBoggy ground, or a situation you cannot get free of.C2

    “The company got lost in a morass of paperwork and legal disputes.”

morass is a bog.

Where it comes from

Dutch moeras means a marsh, and is a relative of the English marsh.

  1. Dutch

    moeras — marsh, swamp

  2. English, today

    morass

From Dutch moeras (“marsh, swamp”), an alteration (with influence from Dutch moer (“moor”)) of a direct descendant of Middle Dutch marasch (“marsh”). The Middle Dutch word is a borrowing from Old French mareis, from Proto-West Germanic marisk. a doublet of marish and marsh, and linked in part to moor. Compare quagmire.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

morass in the wild

  • Over 100 species of birds have been recorded in the Black River morass.

    Black River (Jamaica)

  • At one time, a morass of three serpents was another animated figure on the front of the ride, and other animated figures have been there previously.

    Ghost Hole

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.