Pure vs Mere - What's the difference?
pure | mere |
Free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.
* (1800-1859)
(senseid)Free of foreign material or pollutants.
* (Isaac Watts) (1674-1748)
Free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean.
* Bible, v. 22
(label) Done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2014-06-21, volume=411, issue=8892, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (label) Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
(label) Without harmonics or overtones; not harsh or discordant.
(Liverpool) to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
(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=
Mere is a synonym of pure.
As adjectives the difference between pure and mere
is that pure is free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied while mere is famous.As an adverb pure
is to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.As a noun mere is
the sea.As a verb mere is
to limit; bound; divide or cause division in.pure
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient or modern history records.
- A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy.
- Keep thyself pure .
Magician’s brain, passage=The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.}}
Synonyms
* perfect * innocent * See alsoAntonyms
* impure, contaminated * (done for its own sake) appliedDerived terms
* pure finder * as pure as the driven snowAdverb
(en adverb)- You’re pure busy.
External links
* *Anagrams
* ----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.}}