mare's nest

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mare's nest

(mârz)

n. pl. mare's nests or mares' nests

1. A hoax or fraud.

2. An extraordinarily complicated situation.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

mare's nest - a confused multitude of things

clutter, fuddle, jumble, muddle, smother, welter

disorderliness, disorder - a condition in which things are not in their expected places; "the files are in complete disorder"

rummage - a jumble of things to be given away

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References in classic literature ?

"In my opinion the whole thing is a mare's nest of Bauerstein's!

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After that we really can't support Dubosc if his revelation is a mare's nest."

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Cloth, $119.99--Anyone with more than passing familiarity of Rousseau's oeuvre knows it to be a real mare's nest of interpretive difficulties.

LUND, Nelson. Rousseau's Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction

Palestinians are in a quagmire the likes of which, hyperbole aside, they have never, ever had to face in their modern history -- a mare's nest they appear at first blush, to have no way out of, around or through.

Leaders to be blamed for Palestinian despair

But last weekend, as I tried to unknot the constitutional mare's nest of Catalonia, I was grateful for his premiership.