Mere

Pronunciation

• RP IPA: /mɪə/
• GenAm IPA: /mɪɚ/

• IPA: /ˈmɛɹi/

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 море.

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear

Full definition of mere

Noun

1. (obsolete) the sea
2. (dialectal or literary) a pool; a small lake or pond; marsh
• 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

• mereswine
• mermaid
• merman
• merfolk

From Middle English, 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

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

1. (transitive, obsolete) To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To set divisions and bounds.

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

1. (obsolete) famous.

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

1. (obsolete) Pure, unalloyed 8th-17th c..
• 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.8:So oft as I this history record,
  My heart doth melt with meere compassion â€¦.
• 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, I.56:Meere 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 15th-18th c..
• 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 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 16th c., pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
• 2006, w, Internal Combustion Chapter 2, 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.
• 2012-03, w, Pixels or Perish, 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.
4. I saved a mere 10 pounds this week.

Derived terms

• merely

From Maori mere ("more").

Noun

1. a Maori war-club

Anagrams

• erme