mere
/mɪɚ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.13 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
verb
To decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.
Example Sentences
- "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;[…]."
- "...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."
Etymology
From Middle English mere, mer, from Anglo-Norman meer, from Old French mier, from Latin merus (“pure, unmixed, undiluted”), from Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to sparkle, gleam”). Cognate with Old English āmerian, āmyrian (“to purify, examine, revise”). The Middle English word was perhaps influenced by or conflated with sound-alike Middle English mere (“glorious, noble, splendid, fine, pure”), from Old English mǣre (“famous, great, excellent, sublime, splendid, pure, sterling”), from Proto-West Germanic *mārī, from Proto-Germanic *mērijaz.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /mɪɚ/
- British English: /mɪə̯/