up to the hub

Suggesting a wheel stuck in mud.

up to the hub

1. (archaic, idiomatic) As far as possible in embarrassment or difficulty, or in business; deeply involved.
   • Amateur work, illustrated (volume 4, page 406)

     I am afraid A. F. S. (Dresden) gets "up to the hub" in engineering difficulties sometimes, but this will help him to appreciate the force, beauty and application of the expression.

   • 1864, The Gleaner, page 13:

     I was up to the hub in love, and was goin' into it like a locomotive.

   • 1885, Andrew Madsen Smith, Up and Down in the World, Or, Paddle Your Own Canoe, page 106:

     […] I was like the wheels of the wagon, out of which I had made some of my capital — up to the hub in the mire of poverty, a heavy load forcing me deeper down, and no aid likely to be given me.

• “hub”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.