mere

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

English

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Pronunciation

(body of water; limit; famous; just, only):
(Maori war-club):

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). Related to Latin mare, Breton mor, Russian мо́ре (móre).

Alternative forms

Noun

mere (plural meres)

  1. (dialectal or literary) A body of standing water, such as a lake or a pond. More specifically, it can refer to a lake that is broad in relation to its depth. Also included in place names such as Windermere.
    • 1753, Michael Drayton, The Works Of Michael Drayton, esq volume 3, p. 1156:
      When making for the brook the falconer doth espy / One river plash or mere where store of fowl doth lie […]
    • 1774, Goldsmith
      The meres of Shropshire and Chesbire.
    • 1823, Sir Walter Scott
      As a tempest influences the sluggish waters of the deadest mere.
    • 1888, Annie S. Swan
      She loved.. to watch the lovely shadows in the silent depths of the placid mere.
    • 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.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Tennyson to this entry?)
Derived terms
Derived terms

Template:der-mid

Etymology 2

From Middle English mere, from Old English mǣre, ġemǣre (“boundary; limit”), from Proto-Germanic *mairiją (“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

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.
Derived terms

Verb

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  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, David EM Andrews, “Merely a question of boundaries.”, in Sheetlines‎[1], The Charles Close Society, →ISSN:
      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

Etymology 3

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

Alternative forms

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 [8th-17thc.].
  2. (obsolete) Nothing less than; complete, downright [15th-18thc.].
    I saved a mere 10 pounds this week.
    • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 3, member 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 16thc.], pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
    • Template:RQ:BLwnds TLdgr
      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, 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.
    • 2012 March, 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.
    • 2019, Con Man Games, SmashGames, quoting Margaret, Kindergarten 2, SmashGames:
      Ah...my sister wishes to see you. A mere child. She never wants to have lunch with her dear sister, but I guess that's not your problem.


Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 5

Borrowed from Maori mere (“more”).

Noun

mere (plural meres)

  1. A Maori war-club.
    • 2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford 2000, p. 41:
      As Owen prepared to dismiss the matter, Rule produced something that really caught the great man's eye – a greenstone mere, the warclub of the Maori.

Anagrams

Afrikaans

Noun

mere

  1. plural of meer

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.

Estonian

Noun

mere

  1. genitive singular of meri

Italian

Adjective

mere f

  1. (deprecated template usage) Feminine plural of adjective mero.

Anagrams

Latin

Verb

(deprecated template usage) 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 Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

Middle Dutch

Etymology 1

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

Adjective

mêre

  1. greater, larger
    Antonym: minre
  2. older
    Antonym: minre
Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Determiner

mêre

  1. more
    Antonym: minre

Adverb

mêre

  1. Alternative form of mêe

Etymology 2

From Old Dutch meri, from Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri.

Noun

mēre f or n

  1. lake (fresh water)
  2. sea (salt water)
Inflection

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

Descendants
  • Dutch: meer
  • Limburgish: maer

Further reading

Middle French

Etymology

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

Noun

mere f (plural meres)

  1. mother (female family member)
Descendants

Template:etymtree

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 (more) (Russian мо́ре (móre)), Lithuanian mãre.

Pronunciation

Noun

mere m

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

Declension

Declension of mere (strong i-stem)
Case Singular Plural
nominative mere meras
accusative mere meras
genitive meres mera
dative mere merum

Derived terms

Descendants

Old French

Alternative forms

Etymology

From earlier medre, from Latin mater, matrem.

Noun

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

  1. mother (female family member)
Descendants

Template:etymtree

Romanian

Noun

mere n pl

  1. plural of măr

Serbo-Croatian

Verb

mere (Cyrillic spelling мере)

  1. third-person plural present of meriti
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