Word Finder - mere

definition

A body of standing water, such as a lake or a pond. More specifically, it can refer to a lake that is broad in relation to its depth. Also included in place names such as Windermere.

You have a great deal of freedom for a mere slave.

The mere thought filled me with terror.

Really, why do you all think we mere mortals are all idiots?

He was amused and she fumed, her emotions scattered by his mere presence.

They had been in New England for a mere three months, but Sarah had fallen fast and hard for Connor.

The mere spelling is, of course, no more a conscious act than it is in writing.

Now, mere geographical considerations, taken from the situation and configuration of the islands of the so-called Indian or Malay Archipelago, would indicate that they extended in an unbroken series from the shores of the Strait of Malacca to the southern coast of New Guinea, which confronts that of north Australia in Torres Strait, or even farther to the eastward.

The resulting " classification is based on the examination, mostly autoptic, of a far greater number of characters than any that had preceded it; moreover, they were chosen in a different way, discernment being exercised in sifting and weighing them, so as to determine, so far as possible, the relative value of each, according as that value may vary in different groups, and not to produce a mere mechanical ` key ' after the fashion become of late years so common " (Newton's Dictionary of Birds, Introduction, p. 103).

It is, however, not a mere coincidence that the two great kabbalistic text-books, the Bahir and the Zohar (both meaning "brightness"), appear first in the 13th century.

Calarashi has a considerable transit trade in wheat, linseed, hemp, timber and fish from a broad mere on the west or from the Danube.

In this mode of treating the question the order of the terms is numerical, and though the amount of labour is such as might well have deterred a younger man, yet the details were easy, and a great part of it might be entrusted to a mere computer.

By the end of it, any traces of heathen faith, and even of Scandinavian speech, must have been mere survivals.

In Scotland he was not a conqueror, but a mere visitor, and oddly enough he came as a visitor along with those whom he had himself overcome in England.

The pre-eminence so handed on may be of any kind, from substantial political power to mere social respect and precedence.

The privileges of the Roman patriciate, whatever we may call them, were not usurpations; and, if we call the privileges of the Venetian nobility usurpations, they were stealthy and peaceful usurpations, founded on something other than mere violence.

Had they been able to establish and to maintain any kind of privilege, even that of mere honorary precedence, they would exactly answer to continental nobility.

In its origin it was a mere personal mark of distinction, in the primary sense of this word.

This Strophanthus is not remarkable for its rubber - which is mere bird lime - but for the powerful poison of its seeds, often used for poisoning arrows, but of late much in use as a drug for treating diseases of the heart.

Not far from the scene of this conflict stands Balquhain Castle, a seat of the Leslies, now a mere shell, which was occupied by Queen Mary in September 1562 before the fight at Corrichie between her forces, led by the earl of Moray, and those of the earl of Huntly.

The Maoris ate their enemies' hearts to gain their courage, but to whatever degree animistic beliefs may have once contributed to their cannibalism, it is certain that long before Captain Cook's visit religious sanction for the custom had long given place to mere gluttonous enjoyment.

In many beetles the hindwings are reduced to mere vestiges useless for flight, or are altogether absent, and in such cases the two elytra are often fused together at the suture; thus organs originally intended for flight have been transformed into an armour-like covering for the beetle's hind-body.

Russia, and the remainder (mere fortified posts) in the Asiatic dominions.

Drainage finding no outlet through the thick clay, the soil of the forest region is often hidden beneath extensive marshes, and the forests themselves are often mere thickets choking marshy ground; large tracts of sand appear in the W., and the admixture of boulders with the clay in the N.W.

For days together the traveller sees no other vegetation; even this, however, disappears as he approaches the regions recently left dry by the Caspian, where saline clays, bearing a few Salsolaceae, or mere sand, take the place of the black earth.

Finally, in the Baltic provinces nearly all the land belongs to the German landlords, who either farm the land themselves, with hired labourers, or let it in small farms. Only one-fourth of the peasants are farmers, the remainder being mere labourers, who are emigrating in great numbers.

Thus apparently he asserted his authority, but in reality, being only thirteen years old, he was a mere puppet in the hands of one of the opposition factions, who wished to oust their rivals, and for the next four years the misgovernment of the nobles went on as before.

Coming after a series of incompetent rulers, the German princess 11., proved herself a worthy successor to Peter the Great both in home and in foreign affairs; but she was not a mere imitator.

The reformers of the previous reign had sought to make the new local administration (zemstvo) a system of genuine rural self-government and a basis for future parliamentary institutions; these later conservatives transformed it into a mere branch of the ordinary state administration, and took precautions against its ever assuming a political character.

Convinced that the onward march of the Colossus could not be permanently arrested by mere diplomatic conventions, the cabinet of Tokio suddenly broke off diplomatic relations and commenced hostilities (February 8, 1 9 04).

Not that the mere laying or working of a railway requires parliamentary sanction, so long as the work does not interfere with other people's rights and interests.

The mere reading of accounts of seances developed the peculiar susceptibility in some persons, while others, who became mediums ultimately, did so only after prolonged and patient waiting.

The interest in spiritualism, apart from scientific curiosity and mere love of the marvellous, is partly due to the belief that trustworthy information and advice about mundane matters can be obtained through mediums - to the same impulse in fact which has in all ages attracted inquirers to fortune-tellers.

Most of the others are mere islets, the largest 16 m.

This word, he complains, should denote the heavenly food, the reasonable feast alone, and the Lord never used it of mere junketings.

He was the eldest of a family of six sons and a daughter, and the only one who survived childhood; his own life in youth hung by so mere a thread as to be again and again despaired of.

The peculiar service which was rendered at this juncture by the ` Cambridge School' was that, instead of opposing a mere dogmatic opposition to the Tubingen critics, they met them frankly on their own ground; and instead of arguing that their conclusions ought not to be and could not be true, they simply proved that their facts and their premisses were wrong.

It was a characteristic of equal importance that Dr Lightfoot, like Dr Westcott, never discussed these subjects in the mere spirit of controversy.

Memoirs of Lord Anglesey were published by Sir P. Pett in 1693, but contain little biographical information and were repudiated as a mere imposture by Sir John Thompson (Lord Haversham), his son-in-law, in his preface to Lord Anglesey's State of the Government in 1694.

He was repelled from it by the conception he had formed of the character of Newman, whom he regarded as a mere antiquary.

Gauss had shown how to reduce all the phenomena of statical electricity to mere attractions and repulsions exerted at a distance by particles of an imponderable on one another.

The only veritable and real unity in the world of existences is the individual; to assert that the universal exists separately ex parte rei would be to reduce individuals to mere accidents of one indivisible form.

No alternative hypothesis prevails, mere desultory criticism of the internal intricacies being quite inadequate.

It is more than a mere coincidence that this step was taken during the absence in England of one of the ablest and most notable of the Amsterdam rabbis.

Its object was the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine, but though it aroused much interest it failed to attract the majority of the emancipated Jews, and the movement has of late been transforming itself into a mere effort at colonization.

Wasmann considers that ants are neither miniature human beings nor mere reflex automata, and most students of their habits will probably accept this intermediate position as the most satisfactory.

To do this other qualities than mere military capacity were required.

At the end of the 3rd century it appears as a colony, and in the 5th century it became an episcopal see, which (jointly with Teano since 1818) it still is, though it is now a mere village.

Nicator (first reign 145-140) was a mere boy,' and the misgovernment of his Cretan supporters led to the infant son of Alexander Balas, Antiochus Vi.

What is now the German empire was a mere congeries of small states, waging perpetual tariff wars upon each other.

If we take the mere popular view of what is meant by the " old Political Economy," that is, that a generation or so ago economics was comprised in a neatly rounded set of general propositions, universally accepted, which could be set forth in a question we have really to determine is how we can make the best use of the accumulated knowledge of past generations, and to do that we must look more closely into the economic science of the 10th century..