mere — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.

   Synonyms

   alonebaresimpleonlyvery

   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.

   More examples (6)

   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.

2. Pure, unalloyed .

   Usage

   • Obsolete

   Synonyms

   immaculateunadulteratedpristine

   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[…].

3. Nothing less than; complete, downright .

   Usage

   • Obsolete

   Synonyms

   absolutethoroughutter

   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 […].

Noun

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

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   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. To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.

   Usage

   • Obsolete
   • Transitive

2. To set divisions and bounds.

   Usage

   • Intransitive
   • Obsolete

3. To decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   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?

Noun

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

   Usage

   • Obsolete

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

   Usage

   • Obsolete

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

   Usage

   • UK usage
   • dialectal
   • Literary

   Examples

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

   The meres of Shropshire and Cheshire.

   More examples (5)

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

   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

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

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

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

4. Synonym of marsh.

   Usage

   • UK usage
   • dialectal

   Examples

   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?

Noun

1. A Maori war-club.

   Examples

   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.

Adjective

1. being nothing more than specified

   Examples

   a mere child

2. apart from anything else; without additions or modifications

   Synonyms

   baresimple

   Examples

   only the bare facts

   shocked by the mere idea

   More examples (2)

   the simple passage of time was enough

   the simple truth

Noun

1. a small pond of standing water

   Broader terms

   pondpool