Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Being nothing more than what is specified.
- adjective Considered apart from anything else.
- adjective Small; slight.
- adjective Obsolete Pure; unadulterated.
- noun A small lake, pond, or marsh.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Absolutely; wholly.
- noun In the reticulum or supporting skeleton of the extinct silicious sponges of the family Dictyospongidæ, one of the divisions or meshes produced by the intersection of the primary vertical and horizontal spicular bundles. It is subdivided by the spicules of. subordinate rank into lesser areas or quadrangles—dimeres, tetrameres, hexameres.
- Famous.
- Pure; sheer; unmixed.
- Absolute; unqualified; utter; whole; in the fullest sense.
- Sheer; simple; nothing but (the thing mentioned); only: as, it is mere folly to do so; this is the merest trash.
- noun A Middle English form of
mare . - noun A boundary; boundary-line.
- noun A balk or furrow serving as a boundary- or dividing-line in a common field; also, a boundary-stone; a merestone.
- noun A private carriage-road.
- noun A measure of 29 or 31 yards in the Peak of Derbyshire in England.
- noun A pool; a small lake. or pond.
- To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
- To set divisions and bounds.
- noun A Maori war-club; a casse-tête, or war-ax, from 12 to 18 inches in length, made of any suitable hard material, as stone, hard wood, or whalebone. Outside of New Zealand the word is only known as the name of a little trinket of greenstone made in imitation of the New Zealand weapon in miniature, mounted in gold or silver, and used as a brooch, locket, ear-ring, or other article of jewelry.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb obsolete To divide, limit, or bound.
- adjective Unmixed; pure; entire; absolute; unqualified.
- adjective Only this, and nothing else; such, and no more; simple; bare
- noun A boundary.
- noun A pool or lake.
- noun obsolete A mare.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective obsolete
famous . - noun a Maori war-club
- noun obsolete the
sea - noun a pool; a small lake or pond;
marsh - noun
boundary ,limit ; a boundary-marker; boundary-line - verb transitive, obsolete To
limit ;bound ;divide or cause division in. - verb intransitive, obsolete To set divisions and bounds.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective being nothing more than specified
- noun a small pond of standing water
- adjective apart from anything else; without additions or modifications
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word mere.
Examples
-
The manner in which Sabbatarians emphasize the phrase “My Sabbath,” and “My holy day,” is well calculated to mislead the unsuspecting, but those who are schooled in biblical literature will regard it as mere _rant_, _cheap theology_, _mere display_!
The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, May, 1880
-
Are we to suppose then that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mere repetition of that of the second, the beggar, -- that it too is _mere_ pretence?
Shakespearean Tragedy Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
-
Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge).
-
Ma mere qui me pointe le bouquin de tele le doigt sur un programme "tiens regarde ca devrait t'interesser" ... * pinku mate* "la nuit Gay des Lesbiennes" ... * jete un oeil a sa mere* "faut pas pousser non plus ...
-
Another subject I recently interviewed blamed what he called mere "centa-millionaires" for the breakdown in exclusivity of his elitist world.
-
For his part, Nigerien President Mamadou Tanja has rejected all negotiation with what he describes as mere "armed bandits."
-
To the Christian, on the other hand, or to the modern thinker in general, it is difficult, if not impossible, to attach reality to what he terms mere abstraction; while to Plato this very abstraction is the truest and most real of all things.
-
But between cases of what we call mere succession and what is commonly called causal sequence the difference lies merely in the observed fact that in some cases the sequence varies, while in others no exception has ever been discovered.
-
From that time death had held for him a more personal promise; and the obligation to live, to fulfil one's present opportunities, had become charged with another meaning than he had been used to read into what he called his mere animal responsibility.
-
But Chauvelin was not the man to trouble himself about these social amenities, which he called mere incidents in his diplomatic career.
yarb commented on the word mere
'His questions were probably mere pleas for reassurance.'
- Peter Reading, C, 1984
July 4, 2008
maux commented on the word mere
In the book "To Say Nothing of the Dog," by Connie Willis, there is a cat whose meowing is shown as the line of dialogue "Mere."
July 8, 2010