mere
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /mɪə̯/
ipa: /mɪɚ/
ipa: /miə/
ipa: /miːɹ/
ipa: /mjøː/
note: Wales, other regions
ipa: /mjɜː/
note: East Anglia, cheer–chair merger
ipa: /mɛː/
homophone: mear
homophone: mirror (some North American accents)
homophone: mare (cheer–chair merger)
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ) stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fn
ipa: /ˈmɛɹi/
ipa: /ˈmɛɹɛ/
rhymes: -ɛɹi
rhymes: -ɛɹɛ
Forms: form: merer
form: merest
Etymology: From Middle English mere, mer, from Anglo-Norman meer, from Old French mier, from Latin merus (“pure, unmixed, undiluted”), from Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to sparkle, gleam”).
Cognate with Old English āmerian, āmyrian (“to purify, examine, revise”). The Middle English word was perhaps influenced by or conflated with sound-alike Middle English mere (“glorious, noble, splendid, fine, pure”), from Old English mǣre (“famous, great, excellent, sublime, splendid, pure, sterling”), from Proto-West Germanic *mārī, from Proto-Germanic *mērijaz.
Senses: examples: text: The mere thought of pineapple on pizza makes me want to throw up.
text: And ſo vve may have an ever-grovving Idea of infinite Number as vvell as infinite Space or Emptineſs, yet it is a meer Idea, and hath no real Exiſtence vvithout us.
ref: 1733, I[saac] W[atts], “Essay I. A Fair Enquiry and Debate Concerning Space. Sect[ion] XII. Space Nothing Real, but a Meer Abstract Idea.”, in Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, […], London: […] Richard Ford […], and Richard Hett […], →OCLC, page 44:
text: 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;[…].
ref: 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC:
text: ...And ocean salinity, of course, represented only the merest sliver of my ignorance. I didn't know what a proton was, didn't know a quark from a quasar, didn't know how geologists could look at a layer of rock on a canyon wall and tell you how old it was, didn't know anything, really. I became gripped by a quiet, unwonted but insistent urge to know a little more about these matters and to understand above all how people figured them out.
ref: 2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything: Black Swan, page 23:
text: 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.
ref: 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:
text: 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.
ref: 2012 March 24, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106:
text: 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.
ref: 2019, Con Man Games, SmashGames, quoting Margaret, Kindergarten 2, SmashGames:
synonyms: alone
bare
simple
only
very
glosses: Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
examples: text: So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion[…].
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
text: Meere [translating pure] ignorance, and wholy relying on others, was verily more profitable and wiser, than is this verball, and vaine knowledge[…].
ref: 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 56, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
glosses: Pure, unalloyed .
examples: text: If every man might have what he would[…]we should have another chaos in an instant, a meer confusion.
ref: 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 3, member 7:
text: This freedom of expostulation exalted his mother's ire to meer frenzy […].
ref: 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 35, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume I, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:
glosses: Nothing less than; complete, downright .
Derived terms: mere exposure effect
merely
mere mortal