mere

adjective

1. 1

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

   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.

   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;[…].

2. 2

   obsoletePure, unalloyed .

   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. 3

   obsoleteNothing less than; complete, downright .

   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. 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.

verb

1. 1

   obsoleteTo limit; bound; divide or cause division in.

2. 2

   obsoleteTo set divisions and bounds.

3. 3

   To 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?

noun

1. 1

   obsoleteSynonym of sea, a large body of salt water.

2. 2

   obsoleteSynonym of inlet, an arm of the sea.

3. 3

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

   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.

   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

4. 4

   Synonym 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?

noun

1. 1

   Variant of mayor and mairobsoleteAlternative form of mayor and mair.

noun

1. 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.

Forms

plural

meres

comparative

merer

superlative

merest

past tense

mered

past participle

mered

present participle

mering

third person singular

meres