Mere vs Silly - What's the difference?
mere | silly | Related terms |
(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= (label) Pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , I.vi:
* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
* (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (1772-1834)
(label) Simple, unsophisticated, ordinary; rustic, ignorant.
* 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":
* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
* (John Milton) (1608-1674)
Foolish, showing a lack of good sense and wisdom; frivolous, trifling.
Irresponsible, showing irresponsible behaviors.
Semiconscious, witless.
(label) Of a fielding position, very close to the batsman; closer than short.
Simple, not intelligent, unrefined.
* {{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=1
, passage=“Anthea hasn't a notion in her head but to vamp a lot of silly mugwumps. She's set her heart on that tennis bloke
(label) Happy; fortunate; blessed.
(label) Harmless; innocent; inoffensive.
* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
* Robynson (More's Utopia)
(colloquial) A silly person; a fool.
(colloquial) A mistake.
Mere is a related term of silly.
As nouns the difference between mere and silly
is that mere is fear, awe while silly is (colloquial) a silly person; a fool.As an adjective silly is
(label) pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.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
* ----silly
English
Adjective
(er)- A silly man, in simple weedes forworne, / And soild with dust of the long dried way; / His sandales were with toilesome trauell torne, / And face all tand with scorching sunny ray
- After long storms with which my silly bark was tossed sore.
- The silly buckets on the deck.
- For, if we justly call each silly man'' / A ''little island , What shall we call thee than?
- A fourth man, in a silly habit.
- All that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
George Goodchild
- (Chaucer)
- The silly virgin strove him to withstand.
- A silly , innocent hare murdered of a dog.
