mare
UK /mɛə/ · US /mɛɚ/ noun, proper noun
Forms mares maria meare
- noun An adult female horse.
- noun (UK, Ireland, derogatory, slang) A foolish woman.
- noun (obsolete or historical) 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.
- noun (UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, colloquial) A nightmare; a frustrating or terrible experience. “I'm having a complete mare today.”
- noun (planetology) A large, dark plain, which may have the appearance of a sea, such as those on the Moon.
- noun (planetology) 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)”
- proper noun A diminutive of the female given names Mary, Maria, Marianne, and other female names beginning with Mar- , from Hebrew.
- proper noun A neighborhood and favela in Zona Norte district, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Synonyms
Antonyms
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”).
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”).
Inherited from Middle English mare, from Old English mare (“nightmare, monster”), from Proto-West Germanic *marā, from Proto-Germanic *marǭ (“nightmare, incubus”), from Proto-Indo-European *mor- (“feminine evil spirit”). Doublet of mara.
Akin to Dutch (dial.) mare, German (dial.) Mahr, Old Norse mara ( > Danish mare, Swedish mara (“incubus, nightmare”); also Old Irish Morrígan (“phantom queen”), Albanian merë (“horror”), Polish zmora (“nightmare”), Czech mura (“nightmare, moth”), Greek Μόρα (Móra).
Borrowed from Latin mare (“sea”). Doublet of maar and mere (“a body of standing water”).
See mayor.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The female of the horse and other equine quadrupeds.
- noun Sighing, suffocative panting, intercepted utterance, with a sense of pressure across the chest, occurring during sleep; the incubus; --obsolete, except in the compound nightmare.
Etymology [OE. mere, AS. mere, myre, fem of AS. mearh horse, akin to D. merrie mare, G. mähre, OHG. marah horse, meriha mare, Icel. marr horse, OCelt. marka (Pausan. 19, 19,4), Ir. marc, W. march. Cf. Marshal.]
Etymology [AS. mara incubus; akin to OHG. & Icel. mara; cf. Pol. mora, Bohem. m.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “mare”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details