Or, in this tweet by The Atlantic about the “myriad advantages” wealthy children receive in applying to college, referring to the admissions scandal involving actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, among many other high-powered players.Ĭhildren of the wealthy already receive myriad advantages when applying to college, writes But the parents charged in a new FBI investigation allegedly turned to crime to get their kids in instead. Head to our Instagram page to get involved! /yGeDrBab3n We’ll be showcasing collages dedicated to, and showing appreciation for, the myriad of positive ways women contribute to and help shape our world. In the media and in everyday discussion, we find both myriad and myriad of used frequently, such as in this tweet from the Edinburgh Collage Collective celebrating International Women’s Day: “the myriad of positive ways women contribute to … our world.”ĮCC will be celebrating International Women’s Day 8th March. Even the plural form, myriads, is technically correct, though it’s far less common.
Both forms of the word are recognized in Standard American English. The question of whether you should use myriad or myriad of is largely one of style, not correctness. It wasn’t until the late 1700s, Curzan continued, that the of was dropped, and that it became common to use myriad as a standalone adjective. Īs Anne Curzan, a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan, observed on the Michigan Radio segment That’s What They Say, the singular noun form of myriad ( a myriad of) first appeared in English in the early 1600s. Even more shocking? It was often plural ( myriads). Perhaps unbeknownst to many of the naysayers, myriad, as we saw above, was actually used earlier in English as a noun paired with of. You would not say, for example “We sat outside and gazed at the 10,000 of stars in the night sky.” So, why say “the myriad of stars?” The general thinking goes that myriad should be used in the same way that one would use the number 10,000. For instance, the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook currently dictates that the word myriad should be not be followed by of in AP-style writing. They maintain that myriad should only ever be used as an adjective, sans of. Plenty of people use the noun construction a myriad of, but many others argue that this is incorrect. This of is where the controversy comes in. It also became an adjective, without of (e.g., the myriad stars in the night sky). This sense has fallen away, except in historical contexts.Īnd, like its Greek root, myriad went on in English as a noun meaning “ a very great or indefinitely great number of persons or things” … and, guess what, it was typically followed by of (e.g., a myriad of stars in the night sky. When myriad entered English in the mid-1500s, it was a noun that meant “ten thousand” or a set of something of that number, especially soldiers. Via Latin, myriad comes from ancient Greek words, myrios, “countless,” and myrioi, “ten thousand.” (Fun fact: The D ultimately emerges from inflected forms of these words in Greek.) Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon notes that myrioi was “the greatest number in Greek expressed by one word.” This may be why Greek also used the word to mean “infinite.” Most of us have heard of the word myriad … but can you use it in a sentence? Well, we’re going help make at least one thing simpler and get to the bottom of this little word for big things. From college admissions to carbon emissions, it seems society these days is facing a myriad of challenges … or is it myriad challenges? Thanks, myriad.
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