morass

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Anything that entraps or makes progress difficult.

   I wrote to Sacramento about that historical marker, and they've been kicking it around their bureaucratic morass for months.

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. Doublet of marish and marsh, and linked in part to moor. Compare quagmire.

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