mere

See also mère, Mere, and -mere

English

Wikipedia

Pronunciation

Etymologies 1, 2, 3 and 4

• (RP) IPA: /mɪə/, X-SAMPA: /mI@/
• (GenAm) IPA: /mɪɚ/, X-SAMPA: /mI@`/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Etymology 5

• IPA: /ˈmɛɹi/, X-SAMPA: /"mEri/

Etymology 1

Old English mere, from Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri. Cognate with Dutch meer, German Meer, Norwegian mar (only used in combinations, such as marbakke); and (from Indo-European) with Latin mare, Breton mor, Russian море.

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. (obsolete) the sea
2. (dialectal or literary) a pool; a small lake or pond; marsh

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Drayton to this entry?)

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Tennyson to this entry?)

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber & Faber 2005, p. 194:

     Lok got to his feet and wandered along by the marshes towards the mere where Fa had disappeared.

Derived terms

• mereswine
• mermaid
• merman
• merfolk

Etymology 2

From Middle English, from Old English mǣre (“boundary, limit”), from Proto-Germanic *mērijan (“boundary”), from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“to fence”). Cognate with Dutch meer (“a limit, boundary”), Icelandic mærr (“borderland”), Swedish landamäre (“border, borderline, boundary”).

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear, meare

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ix:

     The Troian Brute did first that Citie found, / And Hygate made the meare thereof by West, / And Ouert gate by North: that is the bound / Toward the land; two riuers bound the rest.

Verb

mere (third-person singular simple present meres, present participle mering, simple past and past participle mered)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To set divisions and bounds.

Etymology 3

From Middle English, from Old English mǣre (“famous, great, excellent, sublime, splendid, pure, sterling”), from Proto-Germanic *mērijaz (“excellent, famous”), from Proto-Indo-European *mēros (“large, handsome”). Cognate with Middle High German mære (“famous”), Icelandic mærr (“famous”).

Alternative forms

• meere, mare

Adjective

mere (comparative more mere, superlative most mere)

1. (obsolete) famous.

Etymology 4

Anglo-Norman meer, from Old French mier, from Latin merus.

Adjective

mere (comparative (not attested), superlative merest)

1. (obsolete) Pure, unalloyed [8th-17th c.].
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.8:

     So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion […].

   • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, I.56:

     Meere [transl. pure] ignorance, and wholy relying on others, was verily more profitable and wiser, than is this verball, and vaine knowledge […].

2. (obsolete) Nothing less than; complete, downright [15th-18th c.].
   • 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.3.7:

     If every man might have what he would […] we should have another chaos in an instant, a meer confusion.

3. Just, only; no more than [from 16th c.], pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, Internal Combustion^[1]:

     More than a mere source of Promethean sustenance to thwart the cold and cook one's meat, wood was quite simply mankind's first industrial and manufacturing fuel.

   • 2012 March 1, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106: 

     Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.

   I saved a mere 10 pounds this week.

Derived terms

• merely

Translations

the smallest amount

• Dutch: schamel (nl), luttel (nl)
• Finnish: pelkkä (fi)
• Hungarian: puszta (hu), csupán (hu)
• Khmer: please add this translation if you can
• Mirandese: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: zaledwie (pl)

• Portuguese: mero (pt)
• Romanian: please add this translation if you can
• Serbo-Croatian: пуки (sh)
• Spanish: mero (es)
• Swedish: please add this translation if you can
• Volapük: please add this translation if you can

Etymology 5

Maori mere (“more”).

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. a Maori war-club

Statistics

• Most common English words before 1923: condition · sleep · ex · #688: mere · agreement · ship · third

Anagrams

• erme

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Afrikaans

Noun

mere

1. Plural form of meer

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Danish

Etymology

From Old Norse meiri (“more”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /meːrə/, [ˈmeːɐ]

Adjective

mere

1. more

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Estonian

Noun

mere

1. Genitive singular form of meri.

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Italian

Adjective

mere f

1. Feminine plural of mero

Anagrams

• erme

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Latin

Verb

merē

1. second-person singular present active imperative of mereō

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Middle Dutch

Etymology

From Old Dutch mēro, from Proto-Germanic *maizô.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /meːrə/

Adjective

mere (superlative meest)

1. greater, larger
2. older

Antonyms

• minre

Determiner

mere (superlative meest)

1. more

Antonyms

• minre

Adverb

mere (superlative meest)

1. more, to a greater degree

Synonyms

• mee

Antonyms

• min
• minre

Descendants

• Dutch: meer

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Middle French

Etymology

Latin mater.

Noun

mere f (plural meres)

1. mother (female family member)

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Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri (“sea”). Cognate with Old Saxon meri (Dutch meer), Old High German meri (German Meer), Old Norse marr (Swedish mar). The Indo-European root is also the source of Latin mare, Old Irish muir (Breton mor), Old Church Slavonic море (Russian море), Lithuanian mãre.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈmere/

Noun

mere m

1. sea, ocean
2. lake, body of water

Declension

    Declension of mere (strong a-stem)

	Singular	Plural
nominative	mer	meras
accusative	mer	meras
genitive	meres	mera
dative	mere	merum

Descendants

• English: mere

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Old French

Etymology

Latin mater.

Noun

mere f (oblique plural meres, nominative singular mere, nominative plural meres)

1. mother (female family member)

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Romanian

Noun

mere n pl

1. Plural form of măr