knee-deep
Featured
May 30, 2025
knee-deep
similar to knee-high, it reflects a measure of something vs the benchmark of one's knees. It can be literal (he was knee-deep in the river) but more often is figurative (I am knee-deep in the problem) and often with curse words (I am knee-deep in sh*t). It means being heavily involved, deeply immersed, or overwhelmed by a situation, task, or substance.
The body part, knees, is used to indicate how far into something someone is. If you are up “neck-deep” or “up to your eyeballs”, you are definitely in more than knee-deep and might be close to drowning, figuratively or literally.
The phrase knee-deep had a moment in 2011 when vacation-paradise guru, Jimmy Buffet, joined the Zac Brown Band “Wishing I was knee-deep in the water somewhere”.
similar to knee-high, it reflects a measure of something vs the benchmark of one's knees. It can be literal (he was knee-deep in the river) but more often is figurative (I am knee-deep in the problem) and often with curse words (I am knee-deep in sh*t). It means being heavily involved, deeply immersed, or overwhelmed by a situation, task, or substance.
The body part, knees, is used to indicate how far into something someone is. If you are up “neck-deep” or “up to your eyeballs”, you are definitely in more than knee-deep and might be close to drowning, figuratively or literally.
The phrase knee-deep had a moment in 2011 when vacation-paradise guru, Jimmy Buffet, joined the Zac Brown Band “Wishing I was knee-deep in the water somewhere”.
Puzzle Appearances
The expression knee-deep has appeared in 1 puzzle:
- Puzzle #260 on February 16, 2026
Rate of Appearance in English Language Print
Google's Ngram project shows how often a pair of words has appeared in print every year since the 1800's.
Data from Google Books Ngram Viewer. Licensed under CC BY 3.0.
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