Numerous Words for Multiplicity, Part II

To follow up on last week, and make things more confusing, the word multiple didn’t come into English until the 1640s, and came from the 14^th century French word multiple, which the French got from those Late Latins who used the word multiplus. Multiple means having several parts.  Multiplus means manifold, and came from combining the prefix multi- with –plus, which means, and I quote, “-fold”. In case you’re wondering, and at this point why would you, -fold is a multiplicative (just what we need, another “multi-“ word) suffix. While its use has been “crowded out by the Latinate double, triple, etc.” it is still used in words like hundredfold.  The use of crowd indicates a multitude of uses of double and triple rather than –fold.

Multiplex means having several parts. Sounds like multiple, doesn’t it? But it also means having several aspects, which expands its meaning slightly beyond multiple. It came to English through mathematics over a century before multiple, in the 1550s as an adjective and within ten years became also a noun. It came directly (I said it, etymonline didn’t) from the Latin word multiplex, which means “having many folds; many times as great in number; of many parts.” Many folds sounds like manifold.

Manifold has a different etymological path, which is why it uses “mani-“ rather than “multi-“. It means “of many kinds; numerous and varied.” Its etymology is from Old English, the Anglian version of which is monigfald and the West Saxon version of which is manigfeald. It meant “various, varied in appearance, complicated; numerous, abundant.” And for those who like a challenge, etymonline adds:

A common Germanic compound (cf. Old Frisian Manichfald, Middle Dutch Menichvout, German mannigfalt, Swedish mångfalt, Gothic managfalþs), perhaps a loan-translation of [the] Latin multiplex (see multiply). Retains the original pronunciation of many, Old English also had a verb form, manigfealdian, “to multiply, abound, increase, extend.”

For those of you who care (both of you), Old Frisian was a language "akin to English spoken on the North Sea coast of modern Netherlands and Germany before 1500," according to etymonline.com.

So, manifold has a sense of variety to its multiplicity, multiplicity can be synonymous with manifold or with multiplex, which is about complexity where multiple is about similarity, and multitude can be synonymous with multiple but is the only one to use when speaking of a crowd of people. Or a number of people, or numerous people. 

Or, to make it simpler (I hope), use numerous when just referring a great number of anything, multitude when referring to people or a very large number of objects, manifold when referring to a variety of objects, multiple when referring to a number of similar things, multiplex when referring to one thing with several parts to it, and multiplicity if you can’t remember which of the other five to use. Phew!

Next week: plethora, range, and spectrum. Because there are never enough words for numerous .