sere
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /sɪə/
ipa: /sɪ(ə)ɹ/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
homophone: cere
homophone: seer
homophone: sear
Forms: form: serer
form: serest
Etymology: From Middle English ser, sere, seare, seer, seere, seir, seyr (“dry, withered; emaciated, shrivelled; brittle; bare; dead, lifeless; barren, useless”), from Old English sēar, sīere (“dry, withered; barren; sere”), from Proto-West Germanic *sauʀ(ī), from Proto-Germanic *sauzaz (“dry, parched”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂sews-, *sh₂ews- (“to be dry”).
Cognate with Dutch zoor (“dry and coarse”), Greek αὖος (av́os, “dry”), Lithuanian sausas (“dry”), Middle Low German sôr (Low German soor (“arid, dry”)), Old Church Slavonic соухъ (suχŭ, “dry”). Doublet of sear and sare.
Senses: examples: text: The autumn winds rushing / Waft the leaves that are searest, / But our flower was in flushing, / When blighting was nearest.
ref: 1810, Walter Scott, “Canto III. The Gathering.”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William Miller, →OCLC, stanza XVI, page 118:
text: [T]he recitation of Border Minstrelsy, or a well-sung ballad, served to revive the sere and yellow leaf of age by their refreshing memories of the pleasurable past.
ref: 1868, Henry Lonsdale, “The Græmes, Grames, or Grahams of the Borders”, in The Worthies of Cumberland. The Right Honourable Sir J[ames] R[obert] G[eorge] Graham, Bart. of Netherby, London: George Routledge & Sons, […], →OCLC, page 1:
text: Perhaps it is the scant, delicate detail revealing finer lines, which thus turns corners of Tuscany into an imaginary Hellas. Or perhaps the mere sunny austerity of these rocky sere places, the twitter of birds telling of renewed life, suggesting what, to us, seem the homes of the world's happy youth.
ref: 1905, Vernon Lee [pseudonym; Violet Paget], The Enchanted Woods and Other Essays on the Genius of Places, London; New York, N.Y.: John Lane, →OCLC, page 314:
text: […] a blighted land / More wasted, serer than before.
ref: 1979, Pintíg: Sa Malamig Na Bakal: Lifepulse in Cold Steel: Poems and Letters from Philippine Prisons, Hong Kong: Resource Centre for Philippine Concerns, →OCLC, page 28:
text: Except for their crawlers, and a crow flickering past in the mist, nothing moved: the grass was sere and golden, the dirt beneath white and gravelly.
ref: 1984, Vernor Vinge, “The Peace War”, in Stanley Schmidt, editor, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, volume 104, New York, N.Y.: Davis Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, chapter 37, page 47, column 2:
synonyms: word: sare
word: sear
word: anhydrous
word: arid
word: bone dry
word: droughty
word: dry
word: dry as a bone
word: exsuccous
word: parched
word: sare
word: sear
word: sere
word: unmoist
word: waterless
glosses: Without moisture; dry.
examples: text: Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere—
ref: 1847, Edgar Allan Poe, Ulalume: A Ballad:
glosses: Of thoughts, etc.: barren, fruitless.
examples: text: The roaring wind! it roar'd far off, / It did not come anear; / But with its sound it shook the sails / That were so thin and sere.
ref: 1797–1798 (date written), [Samuel Taylor Coleridge], “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”, in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, London: […] J[ohn] & A[rthur] Arch, […], published 1798, →OCLC, part V, page 27:
glosses: Of fabrics: threadbare, worn out.
Derived terms: wood-sere