Etymologically
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mare

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Pronunciation

mare1 female horse

Etymology

The female horse is inherited from Middle English mare, also mere,[2][3][4] inherited from Old English mȳre and, in Mercian, mēre,[2][5][3] from Proto-Germanic *marhijō,[5][2][3] a feminine derivative of *marhaz (“horse”),[6][7][8] the source of the Old English masculine mearh (“horse”).[6][5][9] The OED takes the modern word as a merger of the feminine and the masculine: the vowel of mare comes from the inflected forms of mearh.[6][3][2] The feminine is cognate with Old Frisian merrie, Old Saxon meriha, Dutch merrie, Old High German meriha, German Mähre (“mare, jade”) and Old Norse merr.[5][2][4][9] The masculine has relatives in Celtic, Gaulish μάρκαν (márkan), Old Irish marc, Welsh march and Breton marc'h, all meaning horse or stallion;[6][7][3] Kroonen calls it an isogloss of Germanic and Celtic,[7] and Etymonline notes the view that it is of Gaulish origin, perhaps a substrate word.[5] The masculine survives in English only in marshal.[5][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The female of the horse or another equine: in the Old English translation of Bede.[6] The Old English masculine mearh, a horse of either sex, appears in Beowulf and was used mainly in poetry.[6]

Semantic evolution

Word Origins notes that the sense "male horse" died out at the end of the Middle English period,[10] and the OED records mare for a horse of either sex until 1881, in later use in Irish English.[6] From the late 14th century, in Chaucer, it was also used of a woman,[6] in Etymonline's gloss "a bad woman, a slut",[5] a sense with a sexual undertone that Green traces to 1303.[11] Proverbs with mare are recorded from about 1405, in Chaucer's Reeve's Tale,[6] and shanks' mare, one's own legs as transport, belongs to a group of metaphorical "riding" uses that once included the gallows (1568–1834).[6] In Scots a mare was a trestle supporting scaffolding (from 1651),[6] in wrestling a throw over the shoulder (from 1602), later the flying mare,[6][5] and a mare's nest is an illusory discovery, from the 1610s.[5]

Timeline

  • before 900 – mȳre, a mare, in West Saxon.[2][12]
  • before 1250 – mare, a mare, a riding horse.[2]
  • c. 1387 – a woman, in Chaucer.[6]
  • 1568 – the gallows (obsolete by 1834).[6]
  • 1602 – a throw in wrestling.[6]
  • 1610s – mare's nest.[5]
  • 1651 – in Scots, a trestle supporting scaffolding.[6]
  • 1881 – last record of mare for a horse of either sex.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The mature female of the horse or another equine animal, as a donkey or zebra.[13][14][6]
  2. (Scotland) A trestle supporting scaffolding.[6][15]

Word family

  • flying mare
  • mare's nest
  • mare's tail
  • shanks' mare

mare2 goblin of nightmares

Etymology

The night goblin is inherited from Middle English mare, inherited from Old English mære, also mare,[16][5][6] from Proto-Germanic *marǭ.[5][17] It is cognate with Middle Dutch mare, Middle Low German mar, Old High German mara, German Mahr (“incubus”) and Old Norse mara (“nightmare, incubus”),[5][6][4][16] and the Middle Dutch word passed through Picard into French cauchemar (“nightmare”).[6][5] Outside Germanic it is related to the first element of Old Irish morrigain (“queen of the elves”),[6][4] and to Polish zmora and Czech můra, nightmare.[6][5][17] Etymonline derives it from Proto-Indo-European *mora- (“incubus”), probably from the root Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to rub away, harm”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A spirit thought to lie on sleepers and cause a feeling of suffocation; also that feeling itself: in the early Old English Épinal Glossary.[6] Etymonline gives the Old English senses as incubus, nightmare, monster, and witch.[5]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th and early 16th centuries the word could also mean a spectre or hag (1440–1529),[6] and Skelton and others used it for melancholy, often in the cry away the mare! (1529–1611).[6] Johnson (1755) defined it as a torpor that seems to press on the stomach, "the night hag";[18] he traced it to mara, a spirit that the northern nations imagined to torment sleepers.[18] Since then it has survived mainly in nightmare,[5][16][4] and in dialect compounds such as mare-rode, oppressed by an incubus, in Devon.[15] In British colloquial use since 1981, a mare is a shortening of nightmare: a frustrating or unpleasant experience, as in to have a mare.[6][11]

Timeline

  • early Old English – an incubus, the oppressive spirit of nightmares.[6]
  • 1440 – a spectre, a hag (obsolete by 1529).[6]
  • 1529 – melancholy, in away the mare! (obsolete by 1611).[6]
  • 1981 – short for nightmare, a dreadful experience.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (British, informal) A nightmare; a very unpleasant or frustrating experience: The trip home was a total mare.[6][11]
  2. (obsolete) An evil spirit thought to sit on sleepers and cause nightmares; an incubus.[14][6][16]

Word family

mare3 dark plain on the Moon

Etymology

The lunar plain is borrowed from New Latin mare, from Latin mare (“sea”),[6][2][14][5] the source of marine and related to mere "lake".[2][14][4][6] Etymonline traces the Latin word to Proto-Indo-European *mori- (“body of water”).[5] The OED traces the post-classical Latin use to Kepler's reply to Galileo in 1610.[6] It notes that Plutarch already thought the dark parts of the Moon might be seas,[6] and that Galileo revived the idea in 1610 without using the word,[6] while Barnhart and Etymonline credit Galileo with applying mare to the dark areas.[2][5] Michael van Langren's map of 1645 named areas Mare, and the names still in use come from Giambattista Riccioli's map of 1651.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Any of the large dark plains on the Moon's surface, once thought to be seas: 1860, in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in the OED,[6] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster;[2][14] Etymonline dates it to 1765.[5]

Semantic evolution

The word came into English from the Latin names of the lunar "seas", such as Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquillity,[2] which are often used in English without translation.[6] It was later applied to similar dark areas on Mars and other planets,[2][14] and the plains are now known to be basaltic.[6]

Timeline

  • 1765 – a dark area of the Moon.[5]
  • 1860 – first OED quotation.[6][2][14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (plural maria) Any of the large, dark, flat basaltic plains on the Moon, once believed to be seas; also a similar area on Mars.[6][14][2]

Usage notes

The lunar mare is pronounced [ˈmɑːreɪ] or [ˈmɑːri], with the plural maria [ˈmɑːrɪə].[16]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  9. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  15. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  16. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  17. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  18. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.