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mare

noun
/mɛə/UK/mɛɚ/US/meː//ˈmɑɹ.eɪ/US

Etymology

From Middle English mare, meare, meir, mer, mere, meyre, mure, from Old English mīere (“female horse, mare”), from Proto-West Germanic *marhijā, from Proto-Germanic *marhijō (“female horse”), from *marhaz (“horse”), from Proto-Indo-European *márkos (“horse”). Cognates Cognate with Scots mere (“mare”), Saterland Frisian Märe (“mare”), West Frisian merje (“mare”), Dutch merrie (“mare”), German Mähre (“female horse”), Danish mær (“old mare”), Faroese mer (“mare”), Icelandic meri (“mare”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk merr (“mare”), Swedish mæhr, mær, mähr, märr (“mare”); also Breton marc'h (“horse”), Cornish margh (“horse”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic marc (“horse”), Welsh march (“horse”).

  1. inherited from *márkos✻ — “horse”
  2. inherited from *marhijō✻ — “female horse”
  3. inherited from *marhijā✻
  4. inherited from mīere — “female horse, mare”
  5. inherited from mare

Definitions

  1. An adult female horse.

  2. A foolish woman.

    • The silly mare phoned your mother, talking about applying for a mortgage, and we don't want that, do we?

  3. A type of evil spirit formerly thought to sit on the chest of a sleeping person

    A type of evil spirit formerly thought to sit on the chest of a sleeping person; also, the feeling of suffocation felt during sleep, attributed to such a spirit.

  4. ›+ 6 more definitions

    1. A nightmare

      A nightmare; a frustrating or terrible experience.

      • I'm having a complete mare today.

    2. A large, dark plain, which may have the appearance of a sea, such as those on the Moon.

    3. On Saturn's moon Titan, any of several lakes which are large expanses of what is thought…

      On Saturn's moon Titan, any of several lakes which are large expanses of what is thought to be liquid hydrocarbons.

      • Kraken Mare (a lake of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan which is slightly larger than the Caspian Sea)

    4. Obsolete form of mayor.

    5. Obsolete form of mair.

    6. A diminutive of the female given names Mary, Maria, Marianne, or other female names…

      A diminutive of the female given names Mary, Maria, Marianne, or other female names beginning with Mar- , from Hebrew.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for mare. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA