mare1
/mɛː
/noun
1The female of a horse or other equine animal.Most adults live in social groups, either of stallions, of mares with their dependent foals, or in mixed sex groups....
- They live in permanent small family groups made up of a stallion and one to several mares and their foals.
- Inbreeding may account for the fact that far fewer than half of all breeding mares foal each year.
1.1British informal, derogatory A woman: that crazy mare put three bullets in him
Origin
Old English mearh 'horse', mere 'mare', from a Germanic base with cognates in Celtic languages meaning 'stallion'.
Old English mearh ‘horse’, mere ‘mare’ are from a Germanic base with related words in Celtic languages meaning ‘stallion’. The sense ‘male horse’ died out at the end of the Middle English period. The same root lies behind marshal (Middle English), originally someone in charge of horses.
Rhymes
mare2
/mɛː/noun British informal
1A very unpleasant or frustrating experience: this week is going to be a bit of a mare but at least the end is in sight...
- Another hot day - work's always a mare because the air conditioning's clapped out and that part of town stinks.
- Two weeks ago I had a complete mare getting out of a multi-storey car park in Watford.
- Eventually got to bed in the small hours and woke up this morning with a mare of a hangover.
1.1(Especially in sport) a very poor performance: Eboue had an absolute mare down the right hand side...
- The young striker - once much-tipped in these parts - had an absolute mare before ending the game being stretchered off.
- Omar Bravo is having a bit of a mare today.
- It was an honest acknowledgement that he has struggled to look at home in international football, including yesterday's performance when, by his own admission, he had 'a bit of a mare'.
Origin
1990s: abbreviation of nightmare.
mare3
/ˈmɑːreɪ/ /ˈmɑːri/noun (plural maria /ˈmɑːrɪə/) Astronomy
A large, level basalt plain on the surface of the moon, appearing dark by contrast with highland areas: the maria are largely confined to the near side of the moon [in names]: Mare Imbrium...
- Most of the Moon's iron-rich basalt maria occur on the near side as well, where they alternate with highlands having only moderate concentrations of iron.
- All the Moon's multi-ringed impact basins are older than the Moon's second kind of crust, consisting of basalts that have flooded low-lying areas to form the lunar maria.
- This means, Zuber says, that the northern lowlands are flatter than the lava floods of the lunar maria, flatter than the vast volcanic plains of Venus, flatter than deserts on Earth.
Origin
Mid 19th century: special use of Latin mare 'sea'; these areas were once thought to be seas.