English Explanatory Dictionary

mare

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. An adult female horse.
  2. A foolish woman.
noun
  1. 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.
  2. A nightmare; a frustrating or terrible experience.
noun
  1. A large, dark plain, which may have the appearance of a sea, such as those on the Moon.
  2. On Saturn's moon Titan, any of several lakes which are large expanses of what is thought to be liquid hydrocarbons.
noun
  1. Obsolete form of mayor.
  2. Obsolete form of mair.
name
  1. A diminutive of the female given names Mary, Maria, Marianne, or other female names beginning with Mar- , from Hebrew.

Pronunciation

/mɛə/ /mɛɚ/ en-us-mare.ogg /meː/ /meə/ /miə/ /meɹ/ /mɜː(ɹ)/ /ˈmɑɹ.eɪ/ /ˈmɛɚ.i/ /ˈmɑɹ.i/

Word forms

mare mares meare maria

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”).

Antonyms

stallion stud gelding

Derived words

brood mare flying mare mare's fart mare's leg mare's milk mare's nest Mares Run mare's tail mare's teat Premarin ride the three-legged mare seamare shanks' mare stud mare the grey mare is the better horse three-legged mare two-legged mare wooden mare daymare nightmare
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on M Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary