Myriad

Myriad (pronounced mir-ee-uhd)

(1) Originally, ten thousand (10,000) (archaic).

(2) A very great, innumerable or indefinitely great number of something; having innumerable phases, aspects, variations, etc.

1545-1555: From the French myriade, from the Late Latin mȳriadem (accusative of mȳrias (genitive myriadis)), from the Ancient Greek μυριάς (muriás) and myrias (genitive myriados) (the number 10,000), from μυρίος (muríos (plural myrioi)) (numberless, innumerable, countless, infinite; boundless).  In Ancient Greek, myriad was “the biggest number able to be expressed in one word”.  The ultimate origin is unknown but there may be a link with the primitive Indo-European meue-, the source also of the Hittite muri- (cluster of grapes), the Latin muto (penis) and the Middle Irish moth (penis).  The cardinal (ten thousand) is myriad, the ordinal (ten-thousandth) is myriadth, the multiplier (tenthousandfold) is myriadfold and the collective is myriad.  Myriad is a noun and adjective, myriadisation is a noun, myriadth is an adjective, myriadfold is an adjective & adverb and myriadly is an adverb; the noun plural is myriads.

In a hangover from the medieval habit, in the sixteenth century myriad initially was used in accordance with the Greek and Etymology meaning (ten thousand (10,000)) but as early as the late 1500s was used to refer to “a countless number or multitude of whatever was being discussed” and thus assumed the meaning “lots of; really big number of”.  From at last the mid-eighteenth century, when modifying a plural noun, it predominantly meant great in number; innumerable, multitudinous” and that’s long been the default meaning and references the exact numeric origin (10,000) exist only to list the earlier sense as archaic or as a footnote explaining the use in some historic text.  The most pure of the style guides (the editors used to fighting losing battles) still note than when used as an adjective the word myriad requires neither an article before nor a preposition after.  The result of that strictness is that a phrase like “a myriad of stars” where “myriad” acts as part of a nominal (or noun) group is said to be tautological but so much has the pattern of use evolved that most probably would find the alternative, though elegant, somehow lacking. 

The still rare noun myriadisation (crowdfunding) was a creature of social media, the idea being attracting funding in small increments from many (maybe 10,000 or more) and the concept was one of the (many) reasons Barack Obama's (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) campaign in 2008 to secure the Democratic Party nomination for that year's US presidential election was better funded than that of crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  One topical variant was permyriad, the construct being per- + myriad.  The per- prefix was borrowed from Latin per-, from the Proto-Italic peri- and related to per (through).  As a word-forming element, it's now rare except in science where (1) its used to form nouns & adjectives denoting the maximum proportion of one element in a compound and (2) it was added to the name of an element in a polyatomic ion to denote the number of atoms of that element (usually four).  Historically, in verbs it (3) denoting the sense "through", (4) denoting the sense "thoroughly", (5) denoting the sense "to destruction" and (6) in adjectives and adverbs it denoted the sense of "extremely".  Permyriad means “One out of every ten thousand” (ie one percent of one percent), a concept which was discussed in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2008-2011) when the idea spread of “the one percent” as the section of the population which held a disproportionate and socially destructive of the world’s wealth and property.  The point was made that the extent of the distortion was better illustrated were the math done with the “one percent of the one percent” so the definition of permyriad was in the news although the word never staged much of a revival.

Myriad is often a word of choice when writers are searching for a fancy way to say “lots” and it’s over used.  It no longer is used to convey “10,000” or even a number close to that but it should evoke thoughts of a big number.  Synonyms for myriad in its modern sense include countless, endless, infinite & innumerable and (even in Los Angeles) rehab options may not be quite that plentiful.  A better fancy would have been plethora, the synonyms for which include excess, abundance, glut, surfeit, superfluity & slew.  It’s true plethora & myriad are often used interchangeably but they really are subtly different.  Plethora (the plural plethorae or plethoras) was from the Late Latin plēthōra, from the Ancient Greek πληθώρη (plēthṓrē) (fullness, satiety), the construct being πλήθω (plḗthō) (to be full) +‎ -η (-ē) (the nominal suffix).  It means “an excessive amount or number; an abundance”.  In use, plethora is usually followed by “of” except for the technical use in clinical medicine where it describes “an excess of blood in the skin, especially in the face and especially chronically”.

It’s probably not true that during Antiquity the Athenians never spoke of matters where values higher than 10,000 were discussed but they appear never to have created a single word descriptor of anything bigger.  The structural functionalists among linguistic anthropologists would find that unremarkable because in the society of the age, the need was so rare.  Doubtless, there would have been Greeks who speculated on the number grains of sand on the sea-shore or the stars in the night sky and their astronomers even attempted to estimate the distances to stars but these wouldn’t have been things often heard in everyday conversation and such calculations were expressed in equations.  The need for words came later and advances in the sciences including cosmology, particle physics and virology meant millions, billions, trillions and later multipliers became genuinely useful.  The standardization however didn’t happen until well into the twentieth century.  Until then, in British English a billion was a million millions (1,000,000,000,000), something then really of use only to cosmologists whereas in US use it was calculated as a thousand millions (1,000.000,000) and thus a word with some utility in public finance (although in Weimar Germany’s (1918-1933) period of hyper-inflation (1923) the UK’s definition could have been used of the Papiermarks).

50 trillion (50 Billionen, 5×10¹³) mark note, Weimar Germany, 1923.

Since then of course, because a billion dollars isn’t what it was, we now routinely hear of trillions (often in the form of public debt) while billionaires are the new eligible bachelors and divorcees.  For those dealing with things like atoms, neutrinos and such, there is a point (probably anything beyond a billion) where writing out all those zeros becomes either tedious or impractical so the words are useful.  For mathematicians, the numbers are expressed using exponents: In the expression xⁿ, x is the base and n the exponent; n is the power to which x is raised, thus the common expression "to the power of" so 10²=100 and 10³=1000.  Of course, numbers being infinite, even this convention can in theory become unmanageable, hence the attraction of something like 10^googol to represent a googolplex, a googol being 10¹⁰⁰.  If the need arises (say the discovery that the universe is much bigger than thought or Elon Musk gets really rich) words may make values easier for humans to follow than numerals.