Wordwatch: Multiple

The three-syllable word “multiple” seems to be in the process of replacing the simpler disyllable “many” in the vocabulary of journalists and other writers. It’s particularly evident in American reporting, but needless to say, what happens there also happens here, almost at once.

Here are a few specimens: “In January 2019, the documentary Surviving R. Kelly further detailed their allegations and those of multiple women …” (news report, 28 September 2021) “… a new brand of medical and societal tyranny is manifesting itself in multiple areas of daily life …’ (The Light paper, October 2021). A recent example is: “… television documentaries where the presenter’s framing narrative is combined with multiple “talking head” contributions” – Director of Tate Britain in Art Newspaper report, December 2021. I’d have thought the word “several” would have served the purpose better in all these examples.

“Multiple” is a word often used in technical contexts, which may be why it appeals to writers now. It sounds grander. “Consisting of or characterised by many parts,” says the OED; so the idea of “many” certainly comes into it. But it’s clear that in the examples I cite above that is not the intended meaning at all.

First, “many”: this is an old English word, originally from Old High German and meaning “numerous” or “consisting of a great number.” In modern German “many” is “manch“. 

The sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser used “many” as a noun in the almost obsolete sense of “meinie,” a retinue: that’s to say, a number of persons adhering to a central or senior figure. (In the nineteenth century, John Ruskin wrote an essay that he called Love’s Meinie, using the word in that sense.) 

Over the centuries, something of this meaning was retained and “many” still has the sense of a quantity of individuals or objects, which has merged with that of the French word “multiple,” derived from the Latin verb multiplēre, “to fill.”

So, interestingly, the two words, “many” and “multiple,” represent the two principal sources of modern English, the Teutonic and the Latin. The OED makes it plain that the Latin-derived word carries technical connotations, and has a primary association with mathematics.

After giving the more vernacular definition I’ve just cited, it gives as an equivalent “many and various”. It is this aspect of “multiple” that distinguishes it from the simple”many.” “Multiple women” in the sentence I’ve quoted doesn’t imply the variety of types of women in question, only the number of them. And it usually implies quite a lot. 

It would be pedantic to insist on this distinction every time the word “multiple” is used in everyday speech or prose. Still, when I see a word apparently disappearing under the weight of sheer pretentiousness I’m impelled to give it a helping hand.