What's the difference between mere and simple?

Mere


Definition:

  • (n.) A pool or lake.
  • (n.) A boundary.
  • (v. t.) To divide, limit, or bound.
  • (n.) A mare.
  • (Superl.) Unmixed; pure; entire; absolute; unqualified.
  • (Superl.) Only this, and nothing else; such, and no more; simple; bare; as, a mere boy; a mere form.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Interphase death thus involves a discrete, abrupt transition from the normal state and is not merely the consequence of progressive and degenerative changes.
  • (2) By way of major complications, merely one perforation occurred.
  • (3) Indeed, the nationalist and religious right bloc merely held steady , gaining just one seat.
  • (4) A brief review of the last decade or so of developments in health politics, policy and law suggests that health is no longer a field of mere "dynamics without change."
  • (5) The view that testes found lateral to the external ring and which could be pushed some way into the scrotum were merely retractile was questioned.
  • (6) In these three patients, laxity of the knee in flexion was so severe that posterior instability could not be corrected merely by patellar relocation.
  • (7) It has so far returned a mere $6m (£3.6m) of its relatively meagre $28m (£17.1m) budget, according to Forbes, a percentage of just 21%.
  • (8) In the literature this disease is presented merely as a metastasis.
  • (9) The plasmid-encoded activity does not merely replace the RecBCD enzyme failure but differs in several significant ways.
  • (10) Furthermore, changes between merely perceived identical parts can result in apparent depth.
  • (11) Thus, the long stalks of Sk1 or phosphate-starved caulobacters are not merely a function of their longer doubling times.
  • (12) Exogenous macromolecular DNA was able to repair, to an important degree the radiotoxic effect of 3H-thymidine on V79 cells by a mechanism other than the mere reduction of specific activity of 3H-thymidine.
  • (13) Multiple contacts between the gamma-subunit and calmodulin (delta-subunit), as indicated by our data, may help to explain why strongly denaturing conditions are required to dissociate these two subunits, whereas complexes of calmodulin with most other target enzymes can be readily dissociated by merely lowering Ca2+ to submicromolar concentrations.
  • (14) Scott insisted he was an abstract painter in the way he felt Chardin was too: the pans and fruit were uninteresting in themselves; they were merely "the means of making a picture", which was a study in space, form and colour.
  • (15) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (16) These outcomes further supported the conclusion that the contextual stimuli exerted true conditional control over conditional relations in the equivalence classes and were not merely elements of compound stimuli.
  • (17) A mere glance at the time courses shows what reaction schemes are inapplicable.
  • (18) Since the discovery of the antidepressant effects of interventions in the sleep-wake cycle, a number of hypotheses have emerged according to which disturbances in sleep physiology are not merely expressions but essential components of the pathophysiology of depression.
  • (19) In a Facebook post , the songwriter and activist claims that Swift has merely chosen sides in the battle between Google and Spotify, saying that the singer was trying to “sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers”.
  • (20) It is assumed that one function of grooming behaviour may be a merely cleansing one.

Simple


Definition:

  • (a.) Single; not complex; not infolded or entangled; uncombined; not compounded; not blended with something else; not complicated; as, a simple substance; a simple idea; a simple sound; a simple machine; a simple problem; simple tasks.
  • (a.) Plain; unadorned; as, simple dress.
  • (a.) Mere; not other than; being only.
  • (a.) Not given to artifice, stratagem, or duplicity; undesigning; sincere; true.
  • (a.) Artless in manner; unaffected; unconstrained; natural; inartificial;; straightforward.
  • (a.) Direct; clear; intelligible; not abstruse or enigmatical; as, a simple statement; simple language.
  • (a.) Weak in intellect; not wise or sagacious; of but moderate understanding or attainments; hence, foolish; silly.
  • (a.) Not luxurious; without much variety; plain; as, a simple diet; a simple way of living.
  • (a.) Humble; lowly; undistinguished.
  • (a.) Without subdivisions; entire; as, a simple stem; a simple leaf.
  • (a.) Not capable of being decomposed into anything more simple or ultimate by any means at present known; elementary; thus, atoms are regarded as simple bodies. Cf. Ultimate, a.
  • (a.) Homogenous.
  • (a.) Consisting of a single individual or zooid; as, a simple ascidian; -- opposed to compound.
  • (a.) Something not mixed or compounded.
  • (a.) A medicinal plant; -- so called because each vegetable was supposed to possess its particular virtue, and therefore to constitute a simple remedy.
  • (a.) A drawloom.
  • (a.) A part of the apparatus for raising the heddles of a drawloom.
  • (a.) A feast which is not a double or a semidouble.
  • (v. i.) To gather simples, or medicinal plants.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The accumulation of lipids and enzymes such as simple estarase, lipase, beta-HDH, alpha-GDH and NADPH-reductase in those areas, suggests that lipids are not a simple excretory product.
  • (2) The effects of sessions, individual characteristics, group behavior, sedative medications, and pharmacological anticipation, on simple visual and auditory reaction time were evaluated with a randomized block design.
  • (3) A new and simple method of serotyping campylobacters has been developed which utilises co-agglutination to detect the presence of heat-stable antigens.
  • (4) The results of the evaluation confirm that most problems seen by first level medical personnel in developing countries are simple, repetitive, and treatable at home or by a paramedical worker with a few safe, essential drugs, thus avoiding unnecessary visits to a doctor.
  • (5) Blatter requires a two-thirds majority of the 209 voters to triumph in the opening round, with a simple majority required if it goes to a second round.
  • (6) Each profile is described by a simple sequence of band transitions (BT-sequence).
  • (7) A simple method for ultrarapid freezing of cell cultures in monolayers was developed.
  • (8) A simple method of selective catheterization of the superficial femoral artery (SFA) following antegrade puncture of the common femoral artery is described.
  • (9) Although the relative contributions of different fuels varies greatly in different organisms, in none is there a simple reliance on stored ATP.
  • (10) Even if it were not the case that police use a variety of tricks to keep recorded crime figures low, this data would still represent an almost meaningless measure of the extent of crime in society, for the simple reason that a huge proportion of crimes (of almost all sorts) have always gone unreported.
  • (11) The method of sonicating L3 and Mf fragment antigens used in this study is simple, and its results are easy to observe.
  • (12) Simple cells that are nearly equally dominated by each eye always exhibit strong phase-specific interaction.
  • (13) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
  • (14) When cultures were pulse labeled for 15 min and then incubated under chase conditions for 105 min, the amount of degraded collagen attained a value equal to approximately 20% of the amount synthesized during the labeling period; the data were fit with a simple exponential function that had a 40-min rise time and a 12-min lag time.
  • (15) Treatment was monitored by simple measurements, and it's toxicity proved to be scanty.
  • (16) The presence of a previously unreported dipeptide transport mechanism within blood leukocytes and the selective enrichment of the granule enzyme, DPPI, within cytotoxic effector cells of lymphoid or myeloid lineage appear to afford a unique mechanism for the targeting of immunotherapeutic reagents composed of simple dipeptide esters or amides.
  • (17) The design of a simple dynamic knee simulator is described.
  • (18) Simple interconversion cannot account for the changes in binding that occur upon adding GMP-PNP or removing magnesium, since the increase in [R2]t exceeds the decrease in [R1]t. Moreover, the apparent amount of high-affinity complex exhibits a biphasic dependence on the concentration of [3H]histamine; an increase at low concentrations is offset by a decrease that occurs at higher concentrations.
  • (19) A rapid and simple method has been developed for the nondestructive distinction between aflatoxin B1 and the feed antioxidant, ethoxyquin.
  • (20) The stimuli were two simple tones in experiment 1 and two tonal complexes in both experiments 2 and 3.