mere

See also: Mere, mère, merë, -mere, and mere-

English

Pronunciation

Etymologies 1, 2, 3 and 4

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /mɪə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /mɪɚ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Etymology 5

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛɹi/

Etymology 1

From Middle English mere, from Old English mere (“the sea; mere, lake”), from Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri. Cognate with West Frisian mar, Dutch meer, Low German meer, Meer, German Meer, Norwegian mar (only used in combinations, such as marbakke); and (from Indo-European) with Latin mare, Breton mor, Russian мо́ре (móre).

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. (obsolete) the sea
   • 1460-1500, The Towneley Playsː

     I see that it is good; now make we man to our likeness, that shall be keeper of mere & leas(ow), of fowls and fish in flood.

2. (dialectal or literary) A pool; a small, shallow lake or pond; marsh. Also included in place names such as Windermere.

   (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

Derived terms

• mereswine
• merfolk

• mermaid
• merman

Etymology 2

From Middle English mere, from Old English mǣre (“boundary; limit”), from Proto-Germanic *mēriją (“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.
3. (cartography) To decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.
   • 2016 April 1, David EM Andrews, “Merely a question of boundaries.”, in Sheetlines^[1], The Charles Close Society, ISSN 0962-8207:

     What chance is there of revising this example of case law to include an exception to the generally cited rule when an administrative boundary has been mered in the past to coincide with a private property boundary?

Related terms

• mereing

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

From Anglo-Norman meer, from Old French mier, from Latin merus. Perhaps influenced by Old English mǣre (“famous, great, excellent, sublime, splendid, pure, sterling”), or conflated with Etymology 3.

Adjective

mere (comparative merer, superlative merest)

1. (obsolete) Pure, unalloyed [8^th-17^thc.].
   • 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, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821:
     , 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 [15^th-18^thc.].

   I saved a mere 10 pounds this week.

   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069:, 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 16^thc.], pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
   • 1915, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger, chapter I:

     Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; […].

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:

     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”, in 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.

Derived terms

• merely

Translations

the smallest amount

• Catalan: mer (ca)
• Dutch: schamel (nl), luttel
• Finnish: pelkkä (fi)
• French: simple (fr)
• German: bloß (de)
• Hungarian: puszta (hu), csupán (hu)
• Khmer: គ្រាន់តែ (km) (kroan tae)
• Mirandese: please add this translation if you can

• Polish: zaledwie (pl)
• Portuguese: mero (pt)
• Romanian: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: просто́й (ru) (prostój), не бо́лее чем (ne bóleje čem)
• Serbo-Croatian: пуки
• Spanish: mero (es)
• Swedish: bara (sv), blott (sv)
• Volapük: please add this translation if you can

Etymology 5

Borrowing from Maori mere (“more”).

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. a Maori war-club

Statistics

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

Anagrams

• Emer., REME, erme, meer, reem

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Afrikaans

Noun

mere

1. plural of meer

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Danish

Etymology

From Old Norse meiri (“more”), from Proto-Germanic *maizô.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /meːrə/, [ˈmeːɐ]

Adjective

mere

1. more; to a higher degree

   Han er mere højtidelig end jeg er.

   He is more solemn than I am.

2. more; in greater quantity

   I har mere plads end jeg har.

   You have more space than I do.

Usage notes

"Mere", in the second sense, is only used with uncountable nouns. For countable nouns, use flere.

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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

References

• mere in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “mere” in Félix Gaffiot’s Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette (1934)

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Middle Dutch

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /meːrə/

Adjective

mêre

1. greater, larger

   Antonyms: minre

2. older

   Antonyms: minre

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Determiner

mêre

1. more

   Antonyms: minre

Adverb

mêre

1. Alternative form of mêe

Further reading

• “mere (III)”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• “mere (VIII)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, 1929

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Middle French

Etymology

From Old French mere medre, from Latin mater, matrem.

Noun

mere f (plural meres)

1. mother (female family member)

Descendants

edit

• French: mère
  • Haitian Creole: mè

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Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri (“sea”). Cognate with Old Frisian mere (West Frisian mar), Old Saxon meri (Low German Meer, meer), 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^(key): /ˈmere/

Noun

mere m

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

Declension

Declension of mere (strong a-stem)

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

Descendants

• Middle English: mere
  • English: mere
  • Scots: mere

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Old French

Alternative forms

• medre

Etymology

From earlier medre, from Latin mater, matrem.

Noun

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

1. mother (female family member)

Descendants

edit

• Middle French: mere
  • French: mère
    • Haitian Creole: mè
• Norman: mère, méthe
• Walloon: mere

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Romanian

Noun

mere n pl

1. plural of măr