Mare

How to spell mare

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mare

What does mare mean?

1. nounAn adult female horse.

Mare in a sentence

• The breeder kept one stallion and three mare on the farm.

• The chestnut mare trotted calmly around the paddock.

Where does mare come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English mere, the feminine counterpart of mearh, which simply meant 'horse'. Both forms trace back to a shared Germanic root that gave related words across the family, such as the Dutch merrie and the German Mahre, all originally describing a horse rather than specifically a female one. Over time the general 'horse' meaning narrowed in English so that mare came to mean only the adult female of the species. The masculine mearh has otherwise faded from everyday English, surviving chiefly in the word 'marshal', which began life meaning 'horse servant'. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the only real spelling trap is the silent final 'e' and its likeness to the homophone 'mayor'.

How the word is built

• mare (from Old English mere, the female of mearh 'horse')