mare
/ˈmɑɹ.eɪ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.60 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An adult female horse.
noun
A type of evil spirit formerly thought to sit on the chest of a sleeping person; also, the feeling of suffocation felt during sleep, attributed to such a spirit.
Obsolete
Example Sentences
- "But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶[…]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge,[…]."
- "The silly mare phoned your mother, talking about applying for a mortgage, and we don't want that, do we?"
- "I'm having a complete mare today."
- "Kraken Mare (a lake of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan which is slightly larger than the Caspian Sea)"
Etymology
From Middle English mare, meare, meir, mer, mere, meyre, mure, from Old English mīere (“female horse, mare”), from Proto-West Germanic *marhijā, from Proto-Germanic *marhijō (“female horse”), from *marhaz (“horse”), from Proto-Indo-European *márkos (“horse”). Cognates Cognate with Scots mere (“mare”), Saterland Frisian Märe (“mare”), West Frisian merje (“mare”), Dutch merrie (“mare”), German Mähre (“female horse”), Danish mær (“old mare”), Faroese mer (“mare”), Icelandic meri (“mare”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk merr (“mare”), Swedish mæhr, mær, mähr, märr (“mare”); also Breton marc'h (“horse”), Cornish margh (“horse”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic marc (“horse”), Welsh march (“horse”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /mɛɚ/
- British English: /mɛə/
Usage
- British usage
- Derogatory
- Slang
- Obsolete
- Colloquial