What's the difference between mire and muck?

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.

Muck


Definition:

  • () abbreviation of Amuck.
  • (n.) Dung in a moist state; manure.
  • (n.) Vegetable mold mixed with earth, as found in low, damp places and swamps.
  • (n.) Anything filthy or vile.
  • (n.) Money; -- in contempt.
  • (a.) Like muck; mucky; also, used in collecting or distributing muck; as, a muck fork.
  • (v. t.) To manure with muck.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The muck-raking website Lifenews.ru, which has close links to the FSB, Putin’s former spy agency, has pointed the finger at Nemtsov’s colourful love life.
  • (2) Their 12-year stewardship transformed an obscure theatre notorious for the austerity of its seats into a fashionable address renowned for its rollcall of stars - including Ralph Fiennes, Diana Rigg, Juliet Binoche and Cate Blanchett - all of whom were eager to muck in with communal dressing rooms and a minimum wage.
  • (3) 'They don't use tractors, they use cow muck as fertiliser; and they have low-tech irrigation systems in Kenya.
  • (4) As we picked our way along stream-side bushes, pulling off hard little rosehips and stripping elders of their berries, the scent of September filled the air; the smell after muck-spreaders had been out in the fields.
  • (5) He's not mucked it up today – he's not really been given the opportunity.
  • (6) It goes from being a load of muck to being made into a household object.
  • (7) Time, then, for another "D" word: "decent" Tories and Liberal Democrats, he says, will be expected to muck in.
  • (8) Billy Ivory (Common as Muck) Okay, well, the BBC drama department still produces, consistently the best drama on TV: Criminal Justice, Occupation, Freefall, All the Small Things, Doctor Who, Revelations, Life on Mars.
  • (9) Metal-contaminated muck soil (5700 micrograms g-1 Ni, 650 micrograms g-1 Cu and 90 micrograms g-1 Co) was obtained from a farm adjacent to a nickel refinery in southern Ontario and was placed on a field test plot at Brampton, Ontario, during the summer of 1984.
  • (10) We have previously described a visual area situated in the cortex surrounding the deep infolding of the anterior ectosylvian sulcus of the cat (Mucke et al.
  • (11) We are in power and therefore we have got a bit of muck on our hands.
  • (12) And one of the things I had wanted to do for ages was get stuck into a bunch of things that I had been mucking around with that didn't fit into the Radiohead zone.'
  • (13) Local villagers came out to see them, and Joe, as always was mucking around.
  • (14) I will leave you in the hands of Gregg Bakowski (gregg.bakowski@theguardian.com if you want to get in touch), and with this video of me and Gregg mucking about outside Guardian Towers earlier.
  • (15) He got his sleeves rolled up and mucked in like everyone else.
  • (16) His philosophy of journalism coincided closely with that of guiding Eye spirit, legendary muck-raking reporter Claud Cockburn who dismissed the popular assumption that "facts" lay around like gold in the Yukon waiting to be picked up by a reporter.
  • (17) "In reality, it gets reported but only as part of the generally muck and mire of grease-blotter journalism."
  • (18) A real tiny twitch of a balk that Buck and Muck Carver don't spot or understand October 31, 2013 We've got a few more innings to go here so.... 2.01am GMT Cardinals 0 - Red Sox 6, bottom of the 5th Kevin Siegrist, whom you may remember from that game one Ortiz homer, starts the inning for St Louis.
  • (19) We had five sets of contestants and we got it down to four, so one fewer round in the show, which meant there was much more time for us to muck about.
  • (20) But under all the scars and muck, there's a soulfulness to McCann's performance.

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