(superl.) Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable.
Example Sentences:
(1) Why is it so surprising to people that a boy like Chol, just out of conflict, has thought through the needs of his country in such a detailed way?” While Beah’s zeal is laudable, the situation in South Sudan is dire .
(2) It is that beautiful moment when the original Metamorphosis is destroyed so that it can be refashioned for a global community of readers in dire need of new forms of storytelling.
(3) In this investigation, reanalysis of responses to case vignettes obtained from 436 psychologists, psychiatrists, and internists revealed that on the issue of confidentiality management, these health care providers discriminate among cases involving: Premeditated harm to others, socially irresponsible acts with possible dire consequences to self or others, and minor theft.
(4) The report’s concluding chapters raised dire warning that the operations of contemporary child protection agencies were replicating many of the destructive dynamics of the Stolen Generations era.
(5) Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, warned Barack Obama in public remarks this month that history had shown “sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences”.
(6) Algeria had not scored a World Cup goal since they drew 1-1 with Northern Ireland at Mexico 1986, a run that took in five matches, including that dire 0-0 draw with England in Cape Town four years ago.
(7) Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.
(8) High among the range of issues was the media dominance of the Globo group (whose journalists were chased away from demonstrations by an irate mob), inefficient use of public funds, forced relocations linked to Olympic real estate developments, the treatment of indigenous groups, dire inequality and excessive use of force by police in favela communities.
(9) Burrows had resigned as governor of Bank of Ireland, leaving the lender in dire straits, with big losses and mounting debt threatening its very survival.
(10) Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a major and growing problem for middle-class children and this group is in dire need of attention, it is expected to report.
(11) Vince Cable, their shadow chancellor, said: "The Liberal Democrats welcome the government's recognition that radical action is now needed, reflecting the dire and deteriorating position of the UK economy.
(12) Its willingness to ignore diplomatic convention and use its Kuala Lumpur embassy to conduct an extraterritorial assassination will be seen as setting a dire precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.
(13) What is clear, however, is that the reported escalation in fighting exacerbates the already dire humanitarian and human rights situation and the suffering of the Yemeni people,” said Ban’s spokesman, Farhan Haq.
(14) In a scene of young soldiers at rest for a few minutes at the front, he takes us into their heads: one full of dire forebodings, another singing, one trying to identify a bird on a tree – soldiers dreaming of girls’ breasts, dogs, sausages and poetry.
(15) Despite its own dire predictions on the potential impact of climate change , the government's impact assessment for Flood Re does not take account of " changing flood risk due to deterioration of existing flood defences [or] climate change".
(16) The situation is so dire the National Audit Office has warned that by 2020 schools will be worse funded than at any time since the mid-90s.
(17) John Macgregor, an aid worker who has been accompanying teams delivering food and water to Battambang, described the area as a vast inland sea where conditions are dire and malnutrition is common.
(18) But they are also the stuff of nightmares, because if an electricity grid is overwhelmed by demand, the consequences can be dire, as India discovered recently , when more than 700 million people were left without power.
(19) Thousands of jobs that would have been created will be lost and the knock-on effect will be so dire.
(20) While big businesses have enjoyed access to new couriers, Royal Mail itself eventually reached such a dire state that the Hooper report urged the government to rewrite the law to clarify that competition was a mixed blessing.
Mire
Definition:
(n.) An ant.
(n.) Deep mud; wet, spongy earth.
(v. t.) To cause or permit to stick fast in mire; to plunge or fix in mud; as, to mire a horse or wagon.
(v. t.) To soil with mud or foul matter.
(v. i.) To stick in mire.
Example Sentences:
(1) For decades, resource extraction on First Nations land and chronically underfunded schools have left many of these communities mired in poverty, alcoholism and disease.
(2) Our computer-based corneal topography analysis system was used to study the keratoscope photographs (keratograms) from two patients with classic pellucid marginal degeneration and a third patient with no inferior corneal thinning, whose keratoscope mire pattern was suggestive of the condition.
(3) With an out-of-session Congress deadlocked over immigration reform and right-wing lawmakers hell-bent on “sealing the border”, the White House faces intense pressure to do something – anything – about immigration, after years of burying a civil rights crisis in a mire of political tone-deafness and jingoistic bombast.
(4) A leading thinktank has forecast that Britain will remain mired in recession this year, and slashed growth forecasts for almost all members of the G7 group of leading industrial nations.
(5) The European commission released a statement about the situation later on Wednesday, less than two weeks after agreeing a rescue deal for Greece that was meant to prevent Italy and Spain being dragged into the mire.
(6) The discovery of "serious failings" in the sale of these so-called interest rate swaps comes as the banking industry is mired in controversy about manipulating interest rates following the record-breaking £290m fine slapped on Barclays on Wednesday.
(7) Since the incumbent, Ilham Aliyev, inherited power from his late father 10 years ago, Azerbaijan has become mired in rampant corruption , and the ruling regime has grown ever more authoritarian and ruthless .
(8) The French president, François Hollande , will have 25 minutes on primetime television on Sunday evening to convince his nation that he will keep his election pledges and drag his country out of the economic mire.
(9) But I was wrong to peg Let’s Be Cops down in the mire with the Scary Movie franchise.
(10) Mired in a deepening recession, with the economy projected to shrink by at least 2.4% this year, Italy also posted more bad news, with retail sales figures for July showing a 3.2% fall on a year ago.
(11) Dismayingly, the elected government of the president, Ashraf Ghani, like that of Hamid Karzai before it, has proved incompetent, divided, and mired in corruption .
(12) Hunt also argued that the current "sink or swim system" in which free schools, academies and academy chains were managed by Whitehall, had left the school landscape mired in incoherence, confusion and lack of accountability.
(13) A government investigation into his death has become mired in controversy after a judge nominated to head the probe said he would not participate.
(14) The economy has been mired in recession for six consecutive quarters - the longest slump in history – but the CBI now expects output to grow by 1.2% in 2010 and by 2.5% in 2011.
(15) This is an attempt to increase choice and drive digital switchover, which is mired in difficulty but another key duty.
(16) Companies have cut staff and costs to the bone , but demand remains sluggish in the US, and Europe is still mired in a financial crisis of historic proportions.
(17) Her response on a Seattle cable channel to Barack Obama’s state of the nation address in January, in which she accused the president of betraying Americans mired in poverty , spread via the internet and reinforced her growing reputation among activists outside Seattle.
(18) The margin of victory was still a comfortable 95 runs, and the win lifts Warwicks well out of the relegation zone, while leaving Kent deeper in the mire.
(19) One small shareholder, who introduced himself as Captain Hawker, said BP had stepped into a “PR nightmare” by handing out such largesse when the rest of the country was mired in austerity.
(20) Last year 87% of the 900,000 migrants making the journey to Europe came through Greece but, following the European Union’s new deal with Turkey , smugglers’ gangs are already sizing up Libya – which is mired in the chaos of civil war – as an alternative route.