adjective, noun
adjective [onlybeforenoun] (superlative merest, no comparative)
1 used when you want to emphasize how small, unimportant, etc. sb/sth is:
It took her a mere 20 minutes to win. * A mere 2% of their budget has been spent on publicity. * He seemed so young, a mere boy. * You've got the job. The interview will be a mere formality.
2 used when you are saying that the fact that a particular thing is present in a situation is enough to have an influence on that situation:
His mere presence (= just the fact that he was there) made her feel afraid. * The mere fact that they were prepared to talk was encouraging. * The mere thought of eating made him feel sick. * The merest (= the slightest) noise is enough to wake her.
noun (BrE, literary) (also used in names) a small lake
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for mere is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does mere appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — mere appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
