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Sere has not wandered very far from its origins—it derives from the Old English word sear, meaning "dry," which traces back to the same ancient root that gave Old High German, Greek, and Lithuanian words for drying out and withering. Several nouns sere also exist; one is an obscure nominal form of the adjective, but the others are etymologically unrelated to the adjective or to one another. The most common of the nouns is a 20th-century coinage from the Latin word series (meaning "series"), which refers to a series of ecological communities formed in ecological succession.
Examples of sere in a Sentence
Patricia Lockwood, New Yorker, 18 May 2025
Playwright-screenwriter Alice Birch has composed a superheated adaptation that’s anything but sere.
—Peter Marks, Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2023
Seidensticker pointed out Kawabata’s ties to Japanese poetry: This was prose of a sere, haiku-like delicacy and suggestiveness, with much implied and little specified.
—Brad Leithauser, WSJ, 10 Nov. 2023
But the western region accounts for a small fraction of the land, which unfolds east from the Cascades in expanses of sere high desert, lush pasture and thick forest.
—Scott Wilson, Anchorage Daily News, 15 Sep. 2023
Early hominids may have stood up and gotten naked as a way to cope with heat stress on the sere African savanna.
—Tim Folger, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019
Matt Webb Mitovich, TVLine, 18 Mar. 2025
Tennyson ends up completing the workout in 24 minutes (Todd's best time, for reference, is 9:30) and then Todd puts him through a seres of drills to instil him with the right arm wrestling technique.
—Philip Ellis, Men's Health, 12 May 2023
The new drama seres, City on Fire will be available to stream starting Thursday, May 11.
—Josie Howell | Jhowell@al.com, al, 11 May 2023
Thankyou for the apportuny sere th tte of Rhode land nd Hs get communities.
—Alexa Gagosz, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Jan. 2023
Or crystalline and sere and cool—as explorers to Mars might discover?
—Brad Leithauser, WSJ, 5 Oct. 2022
As part of the innovative pick-up deal, the seres will also be broadcast on the CBS later in 2020, following its run on Pop.
—Will Thorne, chicagotribune.com, 27 June 2019
Cite this Entry
“Sere.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sere. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
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