Zwickmühle

Alteration of older Fickmühle, a compound of ficken +‎ Mühle, in which ficken is used in the archaic sense of “to slide”. The alteration was without doubt driven by the need to avoid the vulgar verb. Formally it may be due to conflation with an unattested *Zwiemühle from zwie- (“double”), as well as to association with zwicken (“to pinch”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈtsvɪkˌmyːlə/, [ˈt͡sʋɪkˌmyːlə]

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• Hyphenation: Zwick‧müh‧le

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1. (nine men's morris) double mill
2. (figurative) dilemma; Catch-22; quagmire; predicament; quandary (position in which one will suffer great disadvantage however one reacts)

Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value)

• Zwickmühle on the German Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^de
• “Zwickmühle” in Duden online
• “Zwickmühle” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache