Word.ws English Dictionary

merest

merest is the superlative form of mere.

Meaning of mere

Adjective

mere (comparative merer, superlative merest)

  1. Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
    • The mere thought of pineapple on pizza makes me want to throw up.
    Synonyms:
    alone, bare, simple, only, very
  2. (obsolete) Pure, unalloyed .
    • So oft as I this history record, / My heart doth melt with meere compassion[…].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  3. (obsolete) Nothing less than; complete, downright .
    • If every man might have what he would[…]we should have another chaos in an instant, a meer confusion.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II...

See all 15 meanings of mere

Questions about merest

What is merest the superlative form of?
Merest is the superlative form of mere.

Words near merest in the dictionary

  1. meres
  2. merese
  3. mereses
  4. meresman
  5. meresmen
  6. merest
  7. merestake
  8. merestakes
  9. merestead
  10. meresteads
  11. merestone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: merest (page history and authors); mere (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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