Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
According to the AHD, multitude is a noun which means:
"1. The condition of being very numerous.
2. A very great number, or
3. The masses; the populace."
Its stem multi- ultimately comes from the Latin multus, meaning "many." Its noun-forming suffix -tude was picked up as it travelled through Old French into Middle English. According to the OED, it was one of the first English words to pick up the multi- use from French. As I peruse the OED, I am flabbergasted by the multitude of ways in which this word has been transformed into other parts of speech and turned up in our literature:
| multitude, n. |
| multitudinarious, adj. |
| multitudinary, adj. |
| multitudine, n. |
| multitudinism, . |
| multitudinist, adj. |
| multitudinosity, n. |
| multitudinous, adj. |
| multitudinously, adv. |
| multitudinousness, n. |
I couldn't make up that many forms of this word if I tried! This is such a testament to me of the utter plasticity of our strange tongue.
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