mere

comparative merer · superlative merest

1. Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.First known use 16th c.

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

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   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.

   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

   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;[…].

   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

   ...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.

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

   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.

   2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion

   Synonyms: alone, bare, simple, only, very

2. obsoletePure, unalloyed .First known use 8th–17th c.

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

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

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

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

   Synonyms: immaculate, unadulterated, pristine, chaste, cherry, clean, flawless, halal

3. obsoleteNothing less than; complete, downright .First known use 15th–18th c.

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

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

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

   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

   Synonyms: absolute, thorough, utter, abject, frightful, absolute, prize, clean

plural meres · alternative meer · alternative meere · alternative mear · alternative meare

1. Boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line.

   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.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

present singular third person meres · participle present mering · participle past mered · past mered · alternative meer · alternative meere · alternative mear · alternative meare

1. obsoletetransitiveTo limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
2. intransitiveobsoleteTo set divisions and bounds.
3. cartographyTo decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.

   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?

   2016 April 28, David EM Andrews, “Merely a question of boundaries.”, in Sheetlines, The Charles Close Society, →ISSN

plural meres · alternative mar · alternative mear · alternative meer · alternative meere

1. obsoleteSynonym of sea, a large body of salt water.

   Synonyms: sea

2. obsoleteSynonym of inlet, an arm of the sea.

   Synonyms: inlet

3. UKdialectalliteraryA body of standing water, inclusive of lakes, ponds, and pools, especially any broad and shallow one.

   The meres of Shropshire and Cheshire.

   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

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

   1622, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 20 p. 16

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

   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

   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

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

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

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

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

   1913, Annie S. Swan, The Fairweathers

4. UKdialectalSynonym of marsh.

   Cully Barnaby: Right to roam, Dad. She has got a point. DCI Tom Barnaby: But it's a mere. Who'd want to walk across a mere?

   1999 September 12, Anthony Horowitz et al., “Dead Man's Eleven”, in Midsomer Murders

   Synonyms: marsh

plural meres

1. alternativeobsoleteAlternative form of mayor and mair.

plural meres

1. A Maori war-club.

   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.

   2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford, page 41

1. A village and civil parish in northern Cheshire East district, Cheshire, England (OS grid ref SJ7381).
2. A small town and civil parish with a town council in south-west Wiltshire, England (OS grid ref ST8132).
3. A sub-municipality in East Flanders, Belgium.