mere
Part of speech: adj
noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: cartography
geography
natural-sciences
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.
Inflected forms:
form: merer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: merest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: meres
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: meer
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: meere
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: mear
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: meare
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: meres
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: mering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: mered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: mered
pos: verb
tags: past
form: meer
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: meere
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: mear
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: meare
pos: verb
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
pos: adj
examples: The mere thought of pineapple on pizza makes me want to throw up.
The mere suggestion that the queen’s brother tried to kill your boy would be considered treason.
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.
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;[…].
...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.
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.
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.
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.
gloss: Pure, unalloyed .
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion[…].
Meere [translating pure] ignorance, and wholy relying on others, was verily more profitable and wiser, than is this verball, and vaine knowledge[…].
gloss: Nothing less than; complete, downright .
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: If every man might have what he would[…]we should have another chaos in an instant, a meer confusion.
This freedom of expostulation exalted his mother's ire to meer frenzy […].
gloss: Boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
gloss: To set divisions and bounds.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
gloss: To decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.
pos: verb
examples: 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?
Synonyms: alone
bare
just
mere
only
simple
very
Antonyms: total
Related words: merely
mereing
Derived words: mere exposure effect
merely
mere mortal
Translations: