(n.) Sand easily moved or readily yielding to pressure; especially, a deep mass of loose or moving sand mixed with water, sometimes found at the mouth of a river or along some coasts, and very dangerous, from the difficulty of extricating a person who begins sinking into it.
Example Sentences:
(1) She says that, while she stayed away from the more difficult ramifications of that upbringing, she nevertheless plunged right into the "hot quicksand" of the Arab-Israeli conflict, right down into the Biblical roots of Jewish-Muslim conflict in the story of Abraham, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael (which she meditates upon in the opera's Hagar chorus), and into the vortex of questions about Israel's right to exist and what motivates terrorists.
(2) If you think coalition was bad – backroom deals, cut-and-paste policymaking, good ideas lost in the quicksand between the two parties – then try the looser varieties of alliance.
(3) "Debt-to-GDP ratios are already eye-wateringly high, and this week's stunning capitulation in May industrial production data from Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands has raised fears that the so-called eurozone recovery has become stuck in quicksand, and without growth to erode the debt levels, the money that has flowed into Europe could well come flooding back out."
(4) Inequality meets unrealistic promises There are few places where the political landscape is turning to quicksand as quickly as McDowell, the poorest county in West Virginia.
(5) As the once proud defender of the people against the excesses of capitalism sank into the quicksand, financial storm clouds swiftly gathered overhead.
(6) It was like opening the book of Necronomicon or falling into quicksand."
(7) The FRC revealed that it had been monitoring Quindell since March 2014, a month before a US fund accused the company of being a “country club based on quicksand”.
(8) There has been a huge amount of discussion about whether the business model was valid and whether there was value in the business and this should put that to bed.” Quindell was thrown into turmoil almost a year ago when Gotham City Research, a US short-seller, published a report questioning the company’s revenues and profits, saying its business was “built on quicksand”.
(9) If we are homeowners, we worry that the home we own outright has a monetary value that is as solid as quicksand and that the future we thought was secure will turn out to have been a pipedream.
(10) So while the past week's figures suggest that the foundations for an eventual recovery may be starting to be laid, we are not out of the quicksand yet, let alone out of the woods."
(11) Government attempts to encourage or enact new rules in the wake of the Leveson inquiry have run into the same quicksands of definition, because they require the law to decide who or what is something called a " relevant publisher ".
(12) Looking through the self-interested anecdotes various protagonists are feeding to journalists in order to deepen this current crisis in order to force a resolution, understanding that in a leadership crisis everybody lies and everything is quicksand – the simple facts are Abbott’s leadership is on death watch because he has lost, comprehensively, in the court of public opinion.
(13) Many listeners of The Archers would argue that Helen is not ill, but drowning in toxic environmental quicksand.
(14) But when she chooses to turn it on, she has immense personal magnetism, which has enabled her to forge close and lasting relationships with designers, business moguls and other models – relationships that have done much to shield her from the quicksand into which many models' careers disappear.
(15) When Canada looks at Donald Trump, all we can see is Rob Ford | Matthew Hays Read more But for the rest of us, the last nine years have felt more like a standstill, a collective gang of non-Conservatives stuck in quicksand.
(16) The sensation is one of, having been sure of my path, stepping into quicksand and being slowly pulled under,” Oliver recalls.
(17) And despite the slight ease in activity contraction, economists caution that Britain is "not out of the quicksand yet".
(18) Why did the party allow itself to become stuck in this quicksand?
(19) He followed it with Hunky Dory (1972), a mix of wordy, elaborate songwriting ( The Bewlay Brothers or Quicksand ), crunchy rockers ( Queen Bitch ) and infectious pop songs ( Kooks ).
(20) Kicking the can down the road is still mostly better than kicking it into the quicksands.
Swamp
Definition:
(n.) Wet, spongy land; soft, low ground saturated with water, but not usually covered with it; marshy ground away from the seashore.
(v. t.) To plunge or sink into a swamp.
(v. t.) To cause (a boat) to become filled with water; to capsize or sink by whelming with water.
(v. t.) Fig.: To plunge into difficulties and perils; to overwhelm; to ruin; to wreck.
(v. i.) To sink or stick in a swamp; figuratively, to become involved in insuperable difficulties.
(v. i.) To become filled with water, as a boat; to founder; to capsize or sink; figuratively, to be ruined; to be wrecked.
Example Sentences:
(1) This is a moral swamp, but it's one the Salvation Army claims to be stepping into out of charity .
(2) Ready to be fleeced and swamped, I wandered cautiously along Laugavegur past the lovely independent shops, the clean, friendly streets and ended up in a fun hipsterish bar called the Lebowski, where they serve Tuborg and the craft burgers are named things like The Walter (I ordered The Nihilist).
(3) It has been characterised by others in government as just beating back the crocodiles that come close to the boat rather than draining the swamp."
(4) They can expect to be swamped more often by tidal surges, battered by ever stronger typhoons and storms, and hit by deeper droughts.
(5) The footpaths I followed became swamped with knapweed, bramble and nettle.
(6) One hundred newborn swamp buffalo calves (Bubalis bubalis) from three villages in North-East Thailand were divided equally into treatment and control groups.
(7) The majority of US retailers expect their absolute emissions to in fact grow over time, with business growth swamping efficiency gains.
(8) The prevalence of antibodies at titre 1:10 varied between 31.1% in the derived savannah and 94.4% in the swamp forest.
(9) Guardian US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg looked at the role cities would have to play in reducing emissions: At-risk cities hold solutions to climate change: UN report It is already taking shape as the 21st century urban nightmare: a big storm hits a city like Shanghai, Mumbai, Miami or New York, knocking out power supply and waste treatment plants, washing out entire neighbourhoods and marooning the survivors in a toxic and foul-smelling swamp.
(10) Consecutive man-of-the-match performances against Greece and Ivory Coast helped Colombia brush aside the lassitude that swamped the country’s World Cup preparations after injury to their talismanic striker Falcao .
(11) This month the concessions are being worked at a breakneck pace, with giant tractors and heavy machinery clearing trees, draining swamps and ploughing the land in time to catch the next growing season.
(12) This utterly swamps any western attempt at mitigation.
(13) True, some Britons might be struggling in these austerity years to deal with the rapid shift in ethnic make-up of our towns and cities, but “swamped”?
(14) The explosive briefing attributed to him this week blaming the alleged extremist infiltration of Birmingham schools on a failure by the Home Office to "drain the swamp" by confronting extremism long before it develops into terrorism also suggests that his views remain the same.
(15) Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance!” Trump added the hashtag #DTS, for his campaign slogan “drain the swamp”.
(16) In "Policy Options and the Impact of National Health Insurance," Newhouse, Phelps, and Schwartz concluded that any national health insurance program which did not provide for high user copayments, particularly for ambulatory services, would swamp, and ultimately wreck, the health care delivery system, particularly for ambulatory services.
(17) Storms lash and floods swamp, but the hurricane of cuts outlined by this week's grim report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies will cause infinitely greater devastation to millions for many years to come, like nothing before.
(18) These studies concentrated on those individual birds known, by banding returns, to be residents of large wooded swamps where both eastern equine encephalomyelitis and Highlands J viruses were known to be enzootic.
(19) Mike Pratt, 38, Norfolk Cronus Titan 23 November 2016 4:23pm The UK economy has been swamped with low wages and I see it very difficult for this ever to be resolved without joe public yet again having to take a bullet for the rich.
(20) Either he is an unapologetic populist whose efforts to drain the swamp of Washington have been met, all too predictably, by powerful resistance.