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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mare.

An adult female horse.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/mɛə/Received-Pronunciation/mɛɚ/General-American/meː/Australia/meə/New-Zealand

  1. An adult female horse.

  2. A foolish woman.

    Ireland · UK · derogatory · slang
Where this word comes from

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”).

noun/mɛə/UK/mɛɚ/US

  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.

    historical · obsolete

  2. A nightmare; a frustrating or terrible experience.

    Commonwealth · Ireland · UK · colloquial
    I'm having a complete mare today.
Where this word comes from

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. Cognates 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).

noun/ˈmɑɹ.eɪ/US/ˈmɛɚ.i/US/ˈmɑɹ.i/US

  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.

    Kraken Mare (a lake of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan which is slightly larger than the Caspian Sea)
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Latin mare (“sea”). Doublet of maar and mere (“a body of standing water”).

noun

  1. Obsolete form of mayor.

    alt-of · obsolete

  2. Obsolete form of mair.

    alt-of · obsolete
Where this word comes from

See mayor.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.