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Synonyms for predicament

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noun

quandary, plight, dilemma, strait, puzzle, perplexity, scrape, corner, hole, impasse, tight situation, state, condition, position, circumstance, mess, muddle, imbroglio, exigency, deadlock, pinch, crisis, difficulty, fix*, pickle*, bind*, hot water*, pretty kettle of fish*, jam*, spot*; see also difficulty 1, 2.

predicament implies a complicated, perplexing situation from which it is difficult to disentangle oneself; dilemma implies a predicament necessitating a choice between equally disagreeable alternatives; quandary emphasizes a state of great perplexity and uncertainty as to what to do; plight implies a distressing or unfortunate situation; fix and pickle are both colloquial terms loosely interchangeable with any of the preceding, although more precisely fix is equivalent to predicament and pickle, to plight

See predicament in Webster's New World Roget's A-Z Thesaurus II

noun

A difficult, often embarrassing situation or condition:

box¹, corner, deep water, difficulty, dilemma, Dutch, fix, hole, hot spot, hot water, jam, plight¹, quagmire, scrape, soup, trouble. (Informal) bind, pickle, spot. See easy

See predicament in American Heritage Dictionary 4 Synonyms

predicament plight ¹quandary jam ¹fix pickle

These nouns refer to a situation from which it is difficult to free oneself. A predicament is a problematic situation about which one does not know what to do: “Werner finds himself suddenly in a most awkward predicament” (Thomas Carlyle).
A plight is a bad or unfortunate situation: The report examined the plight of homeless people.
A quandary is a state of perplexity, especially about what course of action to take: “Having captured our men, we were in a quandary how to keep them” (Theodore Roosevelt).
Jam and fix are less formal terms that refer to predicaments from which it is difficult to escape: kids who were in a jam with the authorities; “If we get left on this wreck we are in a fix” (Mark Twain).
An informal term, a pickle is a disagreeable, embarrassing, or troublesome predicament: “I could see no way out of the pickle I was in” (Robert Louis Stevenson).

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