{"id":22527,"date":"2022-11-09T15:53:54","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22527"},"modified":"2022-11-09T21:05:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T21:05:17","slug":"myriads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22527","title":{"rendered":"Myriads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word <strong>myriad<\/strong> [\u02c8m\u026a\u0279i.\u00e6d\/\u02c8m\u026a\u0279i.\u0259d] means a countless number or multitude, and in the past it meant 10,000. It comes from the French <strong>myriade<\/strong> (myriad, 10,000), from the Latin Latin <em>myrias<\/em> (10,000), from the Ancient Greek <em>\u03bc\u03c5\u03c1\u03b9\u03ac\u03c2<\/em> (muri\u00e1s &#8211; countless, 10,000), from <em>\u03bc\u1fe1\u03c1\u1fd0\u0301\u03bf\u03c2<\/em> (m\u016br\u00edos &#8211; numberless, countless, infinite) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/myriad#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/esoastronomy\/52357657470\/in\/photolist-2nLEFsf-2ccdd2P-WHwiKX-FLzzt7-V3K5qx-pN7nmE-Updncs-2jSh53q-dkTfmQ-e7tFRg-5VCaRN-26ja82Q-2dvpkGY-28EWtiU-2i6Anzd-2jSh46f-UEbjCs-fEFhCj-oYUV3s-YhdW3r-2geex5o-2fyJMr1-psMTw3-PV85zQ-6RqoBg-6Y3fr1-mDEgx9-2geePDh-2mErrVZ-6VqbwF-2nG3wjh-Ud1BVm-ykYXg5-2i6Kawg-oc6ejQ-2iHJwwV-2m5TMFn-pjjrSx-2jSdsoN-2geeAw8-NShuP7-2i6FCgx-2daPYCT-8tX9Gj-UEbkKC-5iSTTR-h4LeWu-2gef6uV-8RRB5f-2fFX6Ps\" title=\"Peering through the dust\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52357657470_f2332fe5eb_z.jpg\" alt=\"Peering through the dust\" width=\"640\" height=\"285\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<em>A myriad of stars<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The use of 10,000 to mean countless or infinite happens in other languages as well. For example in Chinese <strong>\u4e07 [\u842c]<\/strong> (w\u00e0n) means 10,000 or a great number [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdbg.net\/chinese\/dictionary?page=worddict&amp;wdrst=0&amp;wdqb=%E4%B8%87\">source<\/a>]. The same character <strong>\u4e07<\/strong> (man) in Japanese means 10,000, a myriad, everything, all or various. When pronounced ban it means completely, absolutely or totally [<a href=\"https:\/\/jisho.org\/search\/%E4%B8%87\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Do other languages do something similar?<\/p>\n<p>Other English words that refer to a large but unspecified number include <strong>um(p)teen<\/strong> or <strong>umpty<\/strong>, which come from <strong>umpty<\/strong> (a colloquial name for a dash in Morse Code used as World War I army slang) and <strong>-teen<\/strong> [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=umpty\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Also <strong>zillion<\/strong>, <strong>gazillion<\/strong>, <strong>bazillion<\/strong>, <strong>jillion<\/strong>, <strong>bajillion<\/strong> and <strong>squillion<\/strong> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Indefinite_and_fictitious_numbers#Umpteen\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Do you have any others?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word myriad [\u02c8m\u026a\u0279i.\u00e6d\/\u02c8m\u026a\u0279i.\u0259d] means a countless number or multitude, and in the past it meant 10,000. It comes from the French myriade (myriad, 10,000), from the Latin Latin myrias (10,000), from the Ancient Greek \u03bc\u03c5\u03c1\u03b9\u03ac\u03c2 (muri\u00e1s &#8211; countless, 10,000), from \u03bc\u1fe1\u03c1\u1fd0\u0301\u03bf\u03c2 (m\u016br\u00edos &#8211; numberless, countless, infinite) [source]. A myriad of stars The use of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,95,104,107,111,129,10,15,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancient-greek-","category-chinese","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-japanese","category-language","category-latin","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22527"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22531,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22527\/revisions\/22531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}