MERE  . 1 . (From

Lat. merits, pure, unmixed; O . Fr. mier), But during the years when he was producing his finest novels an adjective primarily indicating something pure and unmixed; he was practically unknown to the public . In 1849 he married thus " mere wine " implied pure and unadulterated wine, as Mrs Nicholls, daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, the novelist, " mere folly " expressed folly pure and simple . Modern usage a widow, eight years his senior, whose husband had been accidenhas, however, given both to the adjective " mere " and the tally drowned a few months after her first marriage (1844), adverb " merely " a deprecatory and disparaging idea, so that and who had one child, a daughter; but their married life was expressions like " the mere truth," a " mere statement of fact," broken by separation; she died in 1861, and in 1864 Meredith &c., often convey the impression that they are far from being married Miss Vulliamy, by whom he had a son and daughter . " mere " in the sense of " entire " or " absolute," but are, on the His second wife died in x885 . Up to that time there is little to contrary, fragmentary and incomplete . The earlier idea of the record in the incidents of his life; he had not been " discovered " word is retained in some legal phrases, especially in the phrase except by an honourable minority " of readers and critics . " mere motion," that is, of one's own initiative without help or It must suffice to note that during the Austro-Italian War of suggestion from the outside . Another legal phrase is " mere 1866 he acted as special correspondent for the Morning Post; right " (law Latin jus merum), i.e. right without possession. and though he saw no actual fighting, he enjoyed, particularly at 2 . A word which appears in various forms in several Teutonic Venice, opportunities for a study of the Italian people which he and other languages; cf .

Dutch and Ger .

Meer . From the cognate turned to account in several of his novels . Towards the close Lat. mare are derived the Romanic forms, e.g . Fr. mer, Span. mar, of 1867, when his friend John Morley paid a visit to America, &c.; the word appears also in the derivative " marsh " for Meredith undertook in his absence the editorship of the Fort-" marish "; the ultimate origin has been taken to be an Indo- nightly Review for Messrs Chapman & Hall . They were not only European root, meaning " to die," i.e. to lie waste; cf . Sansk. the publishers of his books, but he acted for many years as their marts, desert), an arm of the sea or estuary; also the name literary adviser, in which capacity he left a reputation for being given to lakes, pools and shallow stretches of water inland. not only eminently wise in his selection of the books to be In the Fen countries a mere signifies a marsh or a district published, but both critical and encouraging to authors of nearly always under water. promise whose works he found himself obliged to reject . Thomas 3 . (Derived from an O . Eng., source, maere, a wall or Hardy and George Gissing were among those who expressed boundary; cognate with Lat. mucus, a wall), a landmark or their grateful sense of his assistance . He was indeed one of the boundary, also an object indicating the extent of a property last of the old school of " publishers' readers." In his early without actually enclosing it . A special meaning is that of a married life he lived near Weybridge, and later at Copsham road, which forms a dividing line between two places .

A between

Esher and Leatherhead, while soon after his second " meresman " is an official appointed by parochial' authorities marriage he settled at Flint Cottage, Mickleham, near Dorking, to ascertain the exact boundaries of a parish and to report where he remained for the rest of his life . upon the condition of the roads, bridges, waterways, &c., Meredith's first appearance in print was in the character within them . In the mining districts of Derbyshire a mere is a of a poet, and his first published poem " Chillian Wallah," certain measurement of land in which lead-ore is found. may be found in Chambers's Journal for the 7th of July 1849 .