different between mere vs little

English

Pronunciation

(body of water; limit; famous; just, only):

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /m??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /m??/

(Maori war-club):

• IPA^(key): /?m??i/, /?m???/

Etymology 1

From Middle English mere, from Old English mere (“the sea; mere, lake”), from Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri. Cognate with West Frisian mar, Dutch meer, Low German meer, Meer, German Meer, Norwegian mar (only used in combinations, such as marbakke). Related to Latin mare, Breton mor, Russian ????? (móre). Doublet of mar and mare.

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. (dialectal or literary) 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.
   • 1622, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion song 20 p. 16[1]:

     When making for the Brooke, the Falkoner doth espie

     On River, Plash, or Mere, where store of Fowle doth lye:

   • The meres of Shropshire and Chesbire.

   • 1913, Annie S. Swan, The Fairweathers

     She loved.. to watch the lovely shadows in the silent depths of the placid mere.

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber & Faber 2005, p. 194:

     Lok got to his feet and wandered along by the marshes towards the mere where Fa had disappeared.

Derived terms

Etymology 2

From Middle English mere, from Old English m?re, ?em?re (“boundary; limit”), from Proto-Germanic *mairij? (“boundary”), from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“to fence”). Cognate with Dutch meer (“a limit, boundary”), Icelandic mærr (“borderland”), Swedish landamäre (“border, borderline, boundary”).

Alternative forms

• meer, meere, mear, meare

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. Boundary, limit; a boundary-marker; boundary-line.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ix:

     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.

Derived terms

• Hertsmere

Verb

mere (third-person singular simple present meres, present participle mering, simple past and past participle mered)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To limit; bound; divide or cause division in.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To set divisions and bounds.
3. (cartography) To decide upon the position of a boundary; to position it on a map.

Related terms

• mereing

Etymology 3

From Middle English mere, from Old English m?re (“famous, great, excellent, sublime, splendid, pure, sterling”), from Proto-Germanic *m?rijaz, *m?raz (“excellent, famous”), from Proto-Indo-European *m?ros (“large, handsome”). Cognate with Middle High German mære (“famous”), Icelandic mærr (“famous”), and German Mär, Märchen ("fairy tale").

Alternative forms

• meere, mare

Adjective

mere (comparative more mere, superlative most mere)

1. (obsolete) Famous.

Etymology 4

From Anglo-Norman meer, from Old French mier, from Latin merus. Perhaps influenced by Old English m?re (“famous, great, excellent, sublime, splendid, pure, sterling”), or conflated with Etymology 3.

Adjective

mere (comparative merer, superlative merest)

1. (obsolete) Pure, unalloyed [8^th-17^thc.].
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.8:

     So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion […].
2. (obsolete) Nothing less than; complete, downright [15^th-18^thc.].
   • 1751, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, vol I, ch. 35:

     This freedom of expostulation exalted his mother's ire to meer frenzy […] .

3. Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected. [from 16^thc.]

   • 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; […].

Derived terms

• merely

Translations

Etymology 5

Borrowed from Maori mere (“more”).

Noun

mere (plural meres)

1. A Maori war-club.
   • 2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford 2000, p. 41:

     As Owen prepared to dismiss the matter, Rule produced something that really caught the great man's eye – a greenstone mere, the warclub of the Maori.

Anagrams

• Emer., REME, erme, meer, reem

Afrikaans

Noun

mere

1. plural of meer

Danish

Etymology

From Old Norse meiri (“more”), from Proto-Germanic *maizô.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /me?r?/, [?me??]

Adjective

mere

1. more; to a higher degree

   Han er mere højtidelig end jeg er.

   He is more solemn than I am.

2. more; in greater quantity

   I har mere plads end jeg har.

   You have more space than I do.

Usage notes

"Mere", in the second sense, is only used with uncountable nouns. For countable nouns, use flere.

Estonian

Noun

mere

1. genitive singular of meri

Italian

Adjective

mere f

1. feminine plural of mero

Anagrams

• erme

Latin

Verb

mer?

1. second-person singular present active imperative of mere?

References

• mere in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• mere in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

Middle Dutch

Etymology 1

From Old Dutch m?ro, from Proto-Germanic *maizô.

Adjective

mêre

2. greater, larger

   Antonym: minre

3. older

   Antonym: minre

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Determiner

mêre

1. more

   Antonym: minre

Descendants

• Dutch: meer

Adverb

mêre

1. Alternative form of mêe

Etymology 2

From Old Dutch meri, from Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri.

Noun

m?re f or n

2. lake (fresh water)
3. sea (salt water)

Inflection

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

Descendants

• Dutch: meer
  • Afrikaans: meer
• Limburgish: maer

Further reading

• “mere (I)”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• “mere (III)”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• Verwijs, E.; Verdam, J. (1885–1929) , “mere (I)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ?ISBN, page I
• Verwijs, E.; Verdam, J. (1885–1929) , “mere (VIII)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ?ISBN, page VIII

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French mere medre, from Latin m?ter, m?trem.

Noun

mere f (plural meres)

1. mother (female family member)

Descendants

• French: mère
  • Haitian Creole: mè

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *mari, from Proto-Indo-European *móri (“sea”). Cognate with Old Frisian mere (West Frisian mar), Old Saxon meri (Low German Meer), Dutch meer, Old High German meri (German Meer), Old Norse marr (Swedish mar). The Indo-European root is also the source of Latin mare, Old Irish muir (Breton mor), Old Church Slavonic ???? (more) (Russian ????? (móre)), Lithuanian mãre.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?me.re/

Noun

mere m

1. lake
2. pool
3. (poetic or in compounds) sea

Declension

Derived terms

• meresw?n
• ?þmere

Descendants

• Middle English: mere
  • English: mere
  • Scots: mere

See also

• ?a (“river”)
• g?rse?? (“ocean”)
• s? (“sea”)
• str?am (“stream”)

Old French

Alternative forms

• medre

Etymology

From earlier medre, from Latin m?ter, m?trem.

Noun

mere f (oblique plural meres, nominative singular mere, nominative plural meres)

1. mother (female family member)

Descendants

• Bourguignon: meire
• Middle French: mere
  • French: mère
    • Haitian Creole: mè
• Norman: mère, méthe
• Walloon: mere

Romanian

Noun

mere n pl

1. plural of m?r

Serbo-Croatian

Verb

mere (Cyrillic spelling ????)

1. third-person plural present of meriti

English

Etymology

From Middle English litel, from Old English l?tel, from Proto-Germanic *l?tilaz (“tending to stoop, crouched, little”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewd- (“to bend, bent, small”), equivalent to lout +? -le. Cognate with Dutch luttel, regional German lütt and lützel, West Frisian lyts, Low German lütt, Old High German luzzil, Middle High German lützel, Old English l?tan (“to bow, bend low”); and perhaps to Old English lytig (“deceitful, lot deceit”), Gothic ???????????????????? (liuts, “deceitful”), ???????????????????????? (lutjan, “to deceive”); compare also Icelandic lítill (“little”), Swedish liten, Danish liden, lille, Gothic ???????????????????????????? (leitils), which appear to have a different root vowel. More at lout.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?l?t?l/, [?l?tl?], [?l?.t???]
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?l?tl?/, [?l?.???], [???.??]
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /?l?tl?/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /?l?.???/
• Rhymes: -?t?l
• Hyphenation: lit?tle
• Homophone: Littell

Adjective

little (comparative less or lesser or littler, superlative least or littlest)

1. Small in size.

2. Insignificant, trivial.
   1. (offensive) Used to belittle a person.

3. Very young.

4. (of a sibling) Younger.

5. (also Little) Used with the name of a place, especially of a country or its capital, to denote a neighborhood whose residents or storekeepers are from that place.
   • 1871 October 18, The One-eyed Philosopher [pseudonym], "Street Corners", in Judy: or the London serio-comic journal, volume 9, page 255 [1]:

     If you want to find Little France, take any turning on the north side of Leicester square, and wander in a zigzag fashion Oxford Streetwards. The Little is rather smokier and more squalid than the Great France upon the other side of the Manche.

   • 2004, Barry Miles, Zappa: A Biography, 2005 edition, ?ISBN, page 5:

     In the forties, hurdy-gurdy men could still be heard in all those East Coast cities with strong Italian neighbourhoods: New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. A visit to Baltimore's Little Italy at that time was like a trip to Italy itself.

   • 2020, Richa Bhosale, "Croatian Hall in need of repairs to remain open," Timmins Daily Press:

     "The theatre was bought by the Croatian immigrants as so many immigrants came here in the ’30s and mostly for mining jobs, but in Schumacher itself it was called little Zagreb, and Zagreb is the capital city of Croatia. There were so many of them that they wanted to have their own little community, so they bought the theatre and they renovated it at that time, remodelled it and made it into a Croatian Hall," she explained.

6. Having few members.

7. Short in duration; brief.

   I feel better after my little sleep.

8. Small in extent of views or sympathies; narrow; shallow; contracted; mean; illiberal; ungenerous.

   • The long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise, / Because their natures are little.

   • 2001, Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis, The Unknown Callas: the Greek Years, pg 547.

     Showing unmistakably what a little person he really was, in June 1949 he wrote his newly married daughter with nauseating disregard for the truth

Usage notes

Some authorities regard both littler and littlest as non-standard. The OED says of the word little: "the adjective has no recognized mode of comparison. The difficulty is commonly evaded by resort to a synonym (as smaller, smallest); some writers have ventured to employ the unrecognized forms littler, littlest, which are otherwise confined to dialect or imitations of childish or illiterate speech." The forms lesser and least are encountered in animal names such as lesser flamingo and least weasel.

Antonyms

• (small): large, big
• (young): big
• (younger): big

Derived terms

Translations

Adverb

little (comparative less or lesser, superlative least)

1. Not much.

   We slept very little last night.

   • Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.

2. Not at all.

Antonyms

• much

Translations

Determiner

little (comparative less, superlative least)

1. Not much, only a little: only a small amount (of).

   There is (very) little water left.

   We had very little to do.

Usage notes

• Little is used with uncountable nouns, few with plural countable nouns.
• Little can be used with or without an article. With the indefinite article, the emphasis is that there is indeed some, albeit not much:

We have a little money, so we'll probably get by.

With no article or the definite article (or what), the emphasis is on the scarcity:

We have little money, and little hope of getting more.

The little (or What little) money we have is all going to pay for food and medication, so we can't save any.

See also

• a little

Antonyms

• (not much): much

Translations

Pronoun

little

1. Not much; not a large amount.

   Little is known about his early life.

Noun

little (plural littles)

1. A small amount.

   Can I try a little of that sauce?

   Many littles make a mickle. (Scottish proverb)

   Little did he do to make me comfortable.

   If you want some cake, there's a little in the refrigerator

2. (BDSM, slang) The participant in ageplay who acts out the younger role.
3. (colloquial, college slang) A newly initiated member of a sorority.

Antonyms

• (BDSM): big

Derived terms

• little space

Related terms

• a little
• li'l, li'l', lil
• little by little
• little old
• belittle (cognate verb)

Anagrams

• tillet