Meaning

noun a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot

originUncertain. Most often suggested to be an alteration of Middle English quabbe (“a marsh, bog”), from Old English *cwabbe (“that which shakes or trembles, something soft and flabby”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwabbā (“soggy ground”); this is supported by 1590s attestations of quabmire for quagmire (other earlier variants are quamire, from the 1550s, and quavemire from the 1520s). It has…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0