Definition of "mere"

And ſo vve may have an ever-grovving Idea of infinite Number as vvell as infinite Space or Emptineſs, yet it is a meer Idea, and hath no real Exiſtence vvithout us.

1733, I[saac] W[atts], “Essay I. A Fair Enquiry and Debate Concerning Space. Sect[ion] XII. Space Nothing Real, but a Meer Abstract Idea.”, in Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, […], London: […] Richard Ford […], and Richard Hett […], page 44

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; […].

1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […],

More than a mere source of Promethean sustenance to thwart the cold and cook one's meat, wood was quite simply mankind's first industrial and manufacturing fuel.

2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion

Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.

2012 March, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106

Ah...my sister wishes to see you. A mere child. She never wants to have lunch with her dear sister, but I guess that's not your problem.

2019, Con Man Games, SmashGames, quoting Margaret, Kindergarten 2, SmashGames

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

Meere [translating pure] ignorance, and wholy relying on others, was verily more profitable and wiser, than is this verball, and vaine knowledge […].

1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 56, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […]

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: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, partition II, section 3, member 7

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

1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 35, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume I, London: Harrison and Co., […]

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.

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

What chance is there of revising this example of case law to include an exception to the generally cited rule when an administrative boundary has been mered in the past to coincide with a private property boundary?

2016 April, David EM Andrews, “Merely a question of boundaries.”, in Sheetlines‎, The Charles Close Society

When making for the Brooke, the Falkoner doth espieOn River, Plash, or Mere, where store of Fowle doth lye:

1622, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 20 p. 16

The meres of Shropshire and Cheshire.

1791, Oliver Goldsmith, An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature. […], new edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VIII), London: […] F[rancis] Wingrave, successor to Mr. [John] Nourse, […]

As a tempest influences the sluggish waters of the deadest mere.

1822, [Walter Scott], Peveril of the Peak. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co.

A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink To westward - in the deeps whereof a mere, Round as the red eye of an Eagle-owl, Under the half-dead sunset glared

1859, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page)”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […]

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

1913, Annie S. Swan, The Fairweathers

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

1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber & Faber, published 2005, page 194

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.

2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford, page 41