Definition of "mere" []

• Being nothing more than what is specified: a mere child; a mere 50 cents an hour. (adjective)
• Considered apart from anything else: shocked by the mere idea. (adjective)
• Small; slight: could detect only the merest whisper. (adjective)
• Obsolete Pure; unadulterated. (adjective)
• A small lake, pond, or marsh: "Sometimes on lonely mountain meres/I find a magic bark” ( Tennyson). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The manner in which Sabbatarians emphasize the phrase “My Sabbath,” and “My holy day,” is well calculated to mislead the unsuspecting, but those who are schooled in biblical literature will regard it as mere _rant_, _cheap theology_, _mere display_!"
• "Are we to suppose then that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mere repetition of that of the second, the beggar, -- that it too is _mere_ pretence?"
• "Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge)."