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What is "mere"

Crossword clues for mere

mere
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
mere
I.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
mere coincidence (=only chance and nothing else)
▪ Is it mere coincidence that they always seem to employ men?
pure/mere speculation (=not based on any knowledge)
▪ A government official yesterday dismissed the reports as ‘pure speculation’.
sth's mere existence (=just the fact that something exists)
▪ The mere existence of a contract does not guarantee that you will be paid.
the mere mention of sth (=the fact of saying something that seems unimportant)
▪ The mere mention of his name caused her to burst into tears.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ Now many are almost too vast to comprehend as mere cities built by human hands.
▪ Whatever the chancellor's motives, it is a mistake to dismiss his budget for savers as mere window-dressing.
▪ Those studies which concentrated on local-central relations ignored local politics because they saw local authorities as mere receptacles for central policy.
▪ What the former valued as a proper earthiness and sensuality, the latter condemned as mere vulgarity.
▪ Equally, concepts, the stuff of rules, can not exist in a vacuum as mere semantic toys.
▪ This was strong stuff, even if it was wrapped up as mere journalistic conjecture, and obviously Toby knew or suspected something.
▪ How on earth can the W.R.U. sell out over 100 years of tradition for such a thing as mere money.
▪ Nizan, in short, was accused by Sartre of treating his characters as mere ciphers of a particular class.
■ NOUN
coincidence
▪ I didn't tell him about the handbill I had found; indeed, I quickly dismissed that as a mere coincidence.
▪ Another mere coincidence, say school officials, adding that Tarkanian was adamant about having such a watchdog on staff.
▪ Logic suggests this can not be reduced to mere coincidence.
▪ It has happened too often to me to be mere coincidence.
▪ That may be mere coincidence-but it is also perhaps symbolic.
existence
▪ For Oakeshott the authority of respublica does not arise from the mere existence of a rule of recognition.
▪ Whybrew, at 79, is still very much alive and feeling lucky, but for reasons richer than mere existence.
▪ Chopra had felt pain; the pain of mere existence.
▪ What these entities ultimately accomplish may be academic; but their mere existence should give doomsayers cause for hope.
▪ But it is clear that the mere existence of an alternative remedy does not oust judicial review.
▪ The mere existence of unsolved puzzles within a paradigm does not constitute a crisis.
▪ But the mere existence of such contacts did not mean very much.
fact
▪ The mere fact that the member appeals should not in itself amount to a waiver.
▪ The mere fact that they are willing to undertake these repairs proves that they fear us.
▪ Faith can be impervious to mere facts.
▪ The mere fact of racial imbalance represented a form of inequality.
▪ The mere fact that this took the road through a school and a housing estate was of secondary interest.
▪ This does not mean that the mere fact of customer contact calls for heavy control.
▪ The mere fact that a vessel has sunk does not mean that there is a recoverable claim.
▪ Nevertheless, he says, the legend outweighs mere facts.
mention
▪ Some scholars, however, see Matthew's interest in the Church as going beyond the mere mention of the word.
▪ A mere mention was enough to remind me that I was not free, yet.
▪ She could understand her eight-year-old self, sick with terror at the mere mention of Fincara.
▪ There are lawyers who are proud of their craft, and get defensive at the mere mention of lawyer-bashing.
▪ I normally throw up at the mere mention of footy management, but Soccer Rivals is darn good.
▪ Ruth's heart jumped; escape was precisely what she'd thought of, at the mere mention of Fincara.
▪ The mere mention of precious Graham seemed to enrage Eunice even more.
▪ Pulses quicken at the mere mention of the name; grown men develop a glazed look in their eyes.
mortal
▪ Miracles can be worked by Him alone, although mere mortals may entreat Him by prayer to perform them on their behalf.
▪ A penchant for setting oneself apart and above mere mortals.
▪ They even have a chance of wounding monsters with a toughness of 8 - not bad for mere mortals!
▪ It would have been a proper punishment for a mere mortal who dared to suggest policy to the Son of Heaven.
▪ But mere mortals know the futility of trying to outguess the market.
▪ But strangely enough she did not care long for her divine lover; she preferred a mere mortal.
▪ Unlike mere mortals, Barkley remains undeterred by age and injury.
presence
▪ Often the mere presence of the Helblaster is enough to make the enemy think twice about going somewhere.
▪ It was as if the mere presence of the prize made each man doubt his own wisdom.
▪ Effect Although Cantona watched the game from the second row of the directors' box, his mere presence had an effect.
▪ The mere presence of tubes turned the MITerminator 3 cables to a brittle mess.
▪ Hewett felt their mere presence would calm matters down.
▪ The mere presence of the letter would be something to get her through the morning.
▪ The mere presence of an object on museum premises entails some form of associated documentation.
▪ It was rumoured that they had already burned farms in other villages, so their mere presence filled the Fontanellatesi with terror.
sight
▪ Why should she be troubled by the mere sight of him?
▪ Andrew looked down at her, healed by the mere sight of her.
▪ They didn't come haring towards them as if the mere sight of them was the best thing that had happened all day.
▪ The mere sight of him was enough to make McAllister's toes curl.
thought
▪ The mere thought brought a tremor to her legs.
▪ Shocked by the mere thought, I suddenly feel strangely benign toward the animals that I love so dearly to eat.
▪ The mere thought shocked her and she jerked back.
▪ To Soo-Il, the mere thought of bringing the Beautiful One into the Kang home was immensely pleasing.
▪ Spencer lifted his arms in a flamboyant gesture and Emily felt physically sick at the mere thought of marrying him.
▪ The mere thought gave Masklin nightmares.
▪ The mere thought of Piers no longer being around made her feel horribly empty and desolate.
▪ The mere thought of Madcap Agnew - a name rarely mentioned in the Hall - appeared to stultify him.
word
▪ Yet body language often tells us so much more than mere words.
▪ No transport, today, into a realm beyond mere words.
▪ In any case, the mere word was anathema to her, she thought fiercely.
▪ I claim a man should be known by his deeds and not by mere words.
▪ All this may seem mere words, but words and their meaning are at the heart of the planning process.
▪ While the text may be mere words on a page the discourse takes on a deeper and more determinative role.
▪ All this conveyed a passion and conviction mere words could not express.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
lesser/ordinary/mere mortals
▪ A penchant for setting oneself apart and above mere mortals.
▪ And together we were emphatically co-operative that neighbouring forces were populated by lesser mortals.
▪ However, such models of the universe are not of much interest to us ordinary mortals.
▪ Lords, ladies, dukes and duchesses figure prominently among the names as well as more ordinary mortals of obviously substantial means.
▪ Miracles can be worked by Him alone, although mere mortals may entreat Him by prayer to perform them on their behalf.
▪ She held herself raised by her great prosperity above all that ordinary mortals fear and reverence.
▪ This increased exposure allows them to exploit their advantages over more ordinary mortals more easily than their predecessors could.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Admission costs a mere $5 for adults, and only $1 for children.
▪ How can you expect him to understand? He's a mere child.
▪ Most of the soldiers were mere boys.
▪ Stock prices dropped at the merest rumor of a company takeover.
▪ The mere mention of Ronan's name made her heart beat faster.
▪ The mere thought of drinking whiskey makes me feel sick.
▪ There have been reports that she is going to resign, but it's mere speculation at the moment.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ His own, over the Ohio River at Wheeling, lasted a mere five.
▪ I can hardly see that a mere frigate is going to inconvenience you to all that extent.
▪ If so, it is perhaps surprising that a threat of a mere breach of contract should give rise to liability.
▪ In December he found Herbie Roberts, 21, an amateur wing-half from Oswestry, who cost a mere £200.
▪ It was clearly something more than a mere mortal storm and in point of fact Juno was back of it.
▪ Jobs requiring mere brawn are dwindling, replaced by lower-paid jobs requiring skill, education and a high degree of interpersonal polish.
▪ Most of the opponents of enclosure at Nottingham were not, therefore, mere villains.
▪ Yet some things that look like cynicism may be mere ineptness.
II.noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I followed a path to the hide by the mere.
▪ Next we have fisheries, such as the Cheshire meres, which are ideal environments for producing really big bream.
▪ On several of the meres I fish I can tell to within a few minutes when I will get bites.
▪ Some of the most famous big bream waters in Britain are the Cheshire and Shropshire meres.
▪ There is even a bird-enticing mere built especially for them, with islands, and high banks to keep out unwanted humans.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mere

Mere \Mere\, n. A mare. [Obs.]
--Chaucer.

Mere

Mere \Mere\ (m[=e]r), a. [Superl. Merest. The comparative is rarely or never used.] [L. merus.]

  1. Unmixed; pure; entire; absolute; unqualified.

    Then entered they the mere, main sea.
    --Chapman.

    The sorrows of this world would be mere and unmixed.
    --Jer. Taylor.

  2. Only this, and nothing else; such, and no more; simple; bare; as, a mere boy; a mere form.

    From mere success nothing can be concluded in favor of any nation.
    --Atterbury.

Mere

Mere \Mere\ (m[=e]r), n. [Written also mar.] [OE. mere, AS. mere mere, sea; akin to D. meer lake, OS. meri sea, OHG. meri, mari, G. meer, Icel. marr, Goth. marei, Russ. more, W. mor, Ir. & Gael. muir, L. mare, and perh. to L. mori to die, and meaning originally, that which is dead, a waste. Cf. Mortal, Marine, Marsh, Mermaid, Moor.] A pool or lake.
--Drayton.
--Tennyson.

Mere

Mere \Mere\, n. [Written also meer and mear.] [AS. gem[=ae]re. A boundary.
--Bacon.

Mere

Mere \Mere\ (m[=e]r), v. t. To divide, limit, or bound. [Obs.]

Which meared her rule with Africa.
--Spenser.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mere

c.1400, "unmixed, pure," from Old French mier "pure" (of gold), "entire, total, complete," and directly from Latin merus "unmixed" (of wine), "pure; bare, naked;" figuratively "true, real, genuine," probably originally "clear, bright," from PIE *mer- "to gleam, glimmer, sparkle" (cognates: Old English amerian "to purify," Old Irish emer "not clear," Sanskrit maricih "ray, beam," Greek marmarein "to gleam, glimmer"). Original sense of "nothing less than, absolute" (mid-15c., now only in vestiges such as mere folly) existed for centuries alongside opposite sense of "nothing more than" (1580s, as in a mere dream).

mere

Old English mere "sea, ocean; lake, pool, pond, cistern," from Proto-Germanic *mari (cognates: Old Norse marr, Old Saxon meri "sea," Middle Dutch maer, Dutch meer "lake, sea, pool," Old High German mari, German Meer "sea," Gothic marei "sea," mari-saiws "lake"), from PIE *mori- "sea" (cognates: Latin mare, Old Church Slavonic morje, Russian more, Lithuanian mares, Old Irish muir, Welsh mor "sea," Gaulish Are-morici "people living near the sea").

Wiktionary
mere

Etymology 1 alt. 1 (context obsolete English) the sea 2 (context dialectal or literary English) a pool; a small lake or pond; marsh n. 1 (context obsolete English) the sea 2 (context dialectal or literary English) a pool; a small lake or pond; marsh Etymology 2

alt. boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line n. boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line vb. 1 (context transitive obsolete English) To limit; bound; divide or cause division in. 2 (context intransitive obsolete English) To set divisions and bounds. Etymology 3

  1. (context obsolete English) famous. alt. (context obsolete English) famous. Etymology 4

    a. 1 (label en obsolete) pure, unalloyed (8th-17thc.). 2 (label en obsolete) Nothing less than; complete, downright (15th-18thc.). 3 just, only; no more than (from 16thc.), pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected. Etymology 5

    n. a Maori war-club

WordNet
mere

  1. adj. being nothing more than specified; "a mere child" [syn: mere(a)]

  2. apart from anything else; without additions or modifications; "only the bare facts"; "shocked by the mere idea"; "the simple passage of time was enough"; "the simple truth" [syn: bare(a), mere(a), simple(a)]

mere

n. a small pond of standing water

Gazetteer
Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Meré

Meré is a village (and also a parroquia) in the concejo of Llanes, in Asturias. Its population in 2004 was 175, in 84 dwellings.

It is located on the banks of the Ríu de las Cabras at , which is 28 km from Llanes and about midway between Posada and Benia. It can also be reached from Llanes by taking the road that passes El Mazuco.

During and after the Battle of El Mazuco in 1937 it was the headquarters of the Republican forces; see El Mazuco (La defensa imposible). Almost the entire village was burned to the ground during the war, and had to be rebuilt. However, the Palacio de Meré survived; it was built in the 18th century alongside a smaller and older building.

Meré's main Fiesta is on 31 October; Nuestra Señora del Rosario.

Mere (weapon)

The mere is a type of short, broad-bladed weapon in the shape of an enlarged tear drop. It was used to strike/jab an opponent in the body or the head (it is misleading to call it a club as described by early visitors to New Zealand) ( patu), usually made from Nephrite jade ( Pounamu or greenstone). A mere is one of the traditional, close combat, one-handed weapons of the indigenous Māori, of New Zealand and a symbol of chieftainship.

Méré

Méré may refer to:

  • Méré, Yvelines, France
  • Méré, Yonne, France
Mere (album)

Mere is the first live album by Norwegian rock band deLillos.

Mere (lake)

Usage examples of "mere".

The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude-as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living.

In affairs of marriage both parties should rely to a great extent on the advice of friends, for mere marriages of inclination are often unhappy.

No doubt real allosaurs were not subject to blind collisions, but these were mere machines.

North America, and there discover a series of analogous phenomena, it will appear certain that all these modifications of species, their extinction, and the introduction of new ones, cannot be owing to mere changes in marine currents or other causes more or less local and temporary, but depend on general laws which govern the whole animal kingdom.

Clearly, he now had not to be anguished, not to suffer passively, by mere reasoning about unresolva-ble questions, but to do something without fail, at once, quickly.

This circumstance, and the astonishing certainty, at the very first attempts to estimate space-relations, in the discrimination of round and angular, and in the observation that the table was somewhat farther from him than he could reach, show what influence the mere ability to perceive colors has upon vision in space.

All-Soul being whittled down into fragments, yet this is what they would be doing, annulling the All-Soul--if any collective soul existed at all--making it a mere piece of terminology, thinking of it like wine separated into many portions, each portion, in its jar, being described as a portion of the total thing, wine.

Jew forgetting the very word proselyte, the German forgetting his anthropometric variations, and the Italian forgetting everything, are obsessed by the singular purity of their blood, and the danger of contamination the mere continuance of other races involves.

Using the apostrophe correctly is a mere negative proof: it tells the world you are not a thicko.

All else is now mere clothing about the man, not to be called part of him since it lies about him unsought, not his because not appropriated to himself by any act of the will.

In this view the phrase is mere tautology, for taxation and appropriation are or may be necessary incidents of the exercise of any of the enumerated legislative powers.

And then she kissed me again, until I could return it with no artistry, but mere craving, clinging to her and drowning under her mouth.

Elles sont parfois geminees, et deux meres sont assises cote a cote, tenant chacune un enfant.

The horror, however, with which one shudders at their worship is attributable, in some measure, to the mere effect of costume.

Faust, crossing from mere balladry into the classic, cosmic tragedy of the ages, may be held as the ultimate height to which this German poetic impulse arose.