mere

Adjective

mere (comparative merer, superlative merest)

1. Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected. [from 16th c.]

   Synonyms: alone, bare, simple, only, very

   The mere thought of pineapple on pizza makes me want to throw up.

   • 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:

     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.

   • 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:

     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; […].

   • 2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything: Black Swan, page 23:

     ...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.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:

     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 March, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106:

     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.

   • 2019, Con Man Games, SmashGames, quoting Margaret, Kindergarten 2, SmashGames:

     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.

2. (obsolete) Pure, unalloyed [8th–17th c.].
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion […].

   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 56, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     Meere [translating pure] ignorance, and wholy relying on others, was verily more profitable and wiser, than is this verball, and vaine knowledge […].

3. (obsolete) Nothing less than; complete, downright [15th–18th c.].
   • 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:

     If every man might have what he would […] we should have another chaos in an instant, a meer confusion.

   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 35, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume I, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     This freedom of expostulation exalted his mother's ire to meer frenzy […] .

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear, meare

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. Boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     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

mere (third-person singular simple present meres, present participle mering, simple past and past participle mered)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To set divisions and bounds.
3. (cartography) To decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.
   • 2016 April, David EM Andrews, “Merely a question of boundaries.”, in Sheetlines‎, The Charles Close Society, →ISSN:

     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?

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. (dialectal or literary) A body of standing water, such as a lake or a pond (formerly even a body of seawater), especially a broad, shallow one. (Also included in place names such as Windermere.)
   • 1622, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 20 p. 16:

     When making for the Brooke, the Falkoner doth espie
     On River, Plash, or Mere, where store of Fowle doth lye:

   • 1791, Oliver Goldsmith, An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature. […], new edition, volume (please specify |volume=I to VIII), London: […] F[rancis] Wingrave, successor to Mr. [John] Nourse, […], →OCLC:

     The meres of Shropshire and Cheshire.

   • 1822, [Walter Scott], Peveril of the Peak. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC:

     As a tempest influences the sluggish waters of the deadest mere.

   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page)”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC:

     A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink
     To westward - in the deeps whereof a mere,
     Round as the red eye of an Eagle-owl,
     Under the half-dead sunset glared

   • 1897, Transactions of the Manchester Geological and Mining Society, page 500:

     […] the salt field which extends from those old salt meres at Barton, a little south of Birkdale, and on to Preesall, near Fleetwood.

   • 1913, Annie S. Swan, The Fairweathers:

     She loved.. to watch the lovely shadows in the silent depths of the placid mere.

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber & Faber, published 2005, page 194:

     Lok got to his feet and wandered along by the marshes towards the mere where Fa had disappeared.

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of mayor and mair.

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. A Maori war-club.
   • 2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford, page 41:

     As Owen prepared to dismiss the matter, Rule produced something that really caught the great man's eye – a greenstone mere, the warclub of the Maori.

Usage notes

"Mere", in the second sense, is only used with uncountable nouns. For countable nouns, use flere.

Adjective

mêre

2. greater, larger

   Antonym: minre

3. older

   Antonym: minre

Determiner

mêre

1. more

   Antonym: minre

Adverb

mêre

1. Alternative form of mêe

Noun

mēre f or n

2. lake (fresh water)
3. sea (salt water)

Alternative forms

• mer, merre, mare, mær

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. boundary, border

Alternative forms

• mer, mære, mare, meare

Adjective

mere

1. (of God or Saints) glorious, renowned.
2. (of persons) illustrious, noble, great.
3. beautiful, fair.
4. splendid, fine, good.

Descendants

• French: mère
  • Haitian Creole: mè

Noun

mere m

1. lake
2. pool
3. (poetic or in compounds) sea

Noun

mere f

1. a mare (female horse)

Descendants

• Bourguignon: meire
• Middle French: mere
  • French: mère
    • Haitian Creole: mè
• Norman: mère, méthe
• Walloon: mere