Other forms: quagmires
A quagmire is soft boggy ground, or a mess you cannot get out of. A legal quagmire, sink into a quagmire, a political quagmire.
The figurative use is the commoner and carries the sense of struggling making it worse, which is the whole force of the image. The quag in it is a dialect word for a bog that shakes underfoot.
1nounquagmireSoft boggy ground, or a mess you cannot get out of.
“After weeks of rain, the football pitch had turned into a muddy quagmire.”
quagmire is a bog.
Quag, a dialect word for a shaking bog, plus mire; recorded from 1579.
Recorded since 1579, from quag + mire. The sense “perilous, mixed up and troubled situation” has been recorded since 1775. Alternatively, the word may apparently be a variation of the earlier quakemire, from quake + mire. Compare typologically тресавище, trzęsawisko, тряси́на (akin to трясти́); зыбь, зыбу́н (<… zybь).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA