Mere, Mire, Moor: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Marsh, Swamp

The natural features of a region are its topography (from Greek topos ("place"). Marshes, swamps, and related lands are important examples of topographic features.

In the current alphabetic series of terms that refer to such areas, here are the origins, forms, and histories of mere, mire, and moor. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Mere
Modern English mere goes all the way back to Old English mere (before 12th century). The word is akin to Latin mare ("sea") and Old High German meri ("sea").

The original, now obsolete, meaning of mere is a sea (before 12th century).

Mere has long been used in Great Britain to mean an expanse of standing water, such as a lake or a pool (c. 700), and a fen or a marsh (14th century).

Mire
Modern English mire comes from Middle English mire (14th century), from Old Norse myrr ("mire, marsh"). The word is akin to Old English mos ("marsh") and Old High German mos ("moss").

Mire denotes wet spongy earth, such as that found in a bog or a marsh (14th century). More generally, any heavy, deep mud or slush is also called mire 14th century).

Moor
The Modern English marsh-related word moor (17th century) comes from Middle English mor (13th century), from Old English mór (before 12th century). The word is akin to Old High German muor ("moor").

Moor has two different meanings.

(1) The original sense of the word is still chiefly British: an expansive area of open rolling infertile land consisting of sand, rock, or peat and having a covering of heather, coarse grass, sphagnum moss, and similar plants (c. 700).

This moor is also short for the related, more specific, term high moor: a boggy acidic upland area characterized by heaths and sphagnum.

(2) The other primary meaning of moor is a boggy area of wasteland dominated by grasses and sedges growing in a thick layer of peat (1441).

This moor is related to the more specific term low moor: a wet lowland rich in calcium and potassium and characterized by moisture-loving grasses, sedges, reeds, and rushes.
________________________________

Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.