ill-strained

Updated: May 17, 2025

We saw at once that rapid thaw was going on somewhere or other; and when we stepped off the snow, we found ourselves in a couple of inches of soft green vegetable mud, like a compote of dark-coloured duckweed or, to use a more familiar simile, like a mass of overboiled and ill-strained spinach. To the grief of one of us, there was ice under this, of most persuasive slipperiness.

G. F. (George Forrest) Browne - Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland