Mere vs Mare - What's the difference?
mere | mare |
(obsolete) the sea
(dialectal, or, literary) a pool; a small lake or pond; marsh
* 1955 , William Golding, The Inheritors , Faber & Faber 2005, p. 194:
boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , III.ix:
(obsolete) To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
(obsolete) To set divisions and bounds.
(label) Pure, unalloyed .
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , III.8:
* , I.56:
(label) Nothing less than; complete, downright .
* , II.3.7:
Just, only; no more than , pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
*
* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=(Edwin Black)
, chapter=2, title= * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03
, author=, volume=100, issue=2, page=106
, magazine=(American Scientist)
, title= An adult female horse.
*
*:But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶.
A foolish woman.
*2007 , Hester Browne, Little Lady, Big Apple
*:The silly mare phoned your mother, talking about applying for a mortgage, and we don't want that, do we?
(obsolete, outside, dialects) A type of evil spirit thought to sit on the chest of a sleeping person; also the feeling of suffocation felt during sleep; a nightmare.
(UK, colloquial) (Shortening of (nightmare)) A nightmare; a frustrating or terrible experience.
(planetology) A dark, large circular plain; a “sea”.
(planetology) On Saturn's moon Titan, a large expanse of what is thought to be liquid hydrocarbons.
As nouns the difference between mere and mare
is that mere is fear, awe while mare is tide (periodic change of sea level).mere
English
(wikipedia mere)Etymology 1
From (etyl) mere, from (etyl) .Alternative forms
* (l), (l), (l)Noun
(en noun)- (Drayton)
- (Tennyson)
- Lok got to his feet and wandered along by the marshes towards the mere where Fa had disappeared.
Derived terms
* mereswine * mermaid * merman * merfolkEtymology 2
From (etyl), from (etyl) .Alternative forms
* (l), (l), (l), (l)Noun
(en noun)- 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
(mer)Etymology 3
From (etyl), from (etyl) .Alternative forms
* (l), (l)Etymology 4
From (etyl) meer, from (etyl) mier, from (etyl) merus. Perhaps influenced by (etyl) , or conflated with Etymology 3.Adjective
(er)- So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion.
- Meere .
- If every man might have what he wouldwe should have another chaos in an instant, a meer confusion.
- 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;.
Internal Combustion, passage=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.}}
Pixels or Perish, passage=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.}}
Derived terms
* merelyEtymology 5
From (etyl) .Statistics
*Anagrams
* ----mare
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) mare, mere, from (etyl) mere, . Alternative etymology cites derivation via (etyl) mere, miere'', from (etyl) ), from (etyl) ''markos'' (compare (etyl) march), from Iranian ''marikas'' (compare Old Persian ''marikas'' 'male, manly'), from ''maryas'' (compare Avestan ''mairya'' 'man; male animal'); akin to Sanskrit ''máryas 'young man; stallion'. More at marry.Noun
(en noun)Antonyms
* stallion and gelding refer to adult male horses (a colt refers to an immature one)Coordinate terms
* (adult female horse) foal and filly refer to younger horses, pony can refer to adult horses of either gender under a certain height.Etymology 2
From (etyl) mare, from (etyl) .Noun
(en noun)- I'm having a complete mare today.