Word of the Day Archive
Saturday May 29, 1999
plethora \PLETH-uh-ruh\ , noun:
1. An abnormal bodily condition characterized by an excessive amount of blood in the system.
2. Excess; superabundance.
A plethora of servants helped make this possible; it was customary for a married officer to have as many as six servants, each with particular duties concerning lamps, fires, bathwater, cooking or sanitation.
-- Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant: A Biography
India's huge press corps, representing a plethora of papers and magazines, was something else new since my student days.
-- Abraham Verghese, "The Bandit King and the Movie Star", The Atlantic, February 2001
Pressed to keep up with the plethora of new poetry, small magazines, professional journals, and anthologies, they are frequently also less well read in the literature of the past.
-- Dana Gioia, "Can Poetry Matter?", The Atlantic, May 1991
Plethora comes from the Greek plethora, "a fullness," from plethein, "to be full."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for plethora
