As the resident UUG all-things-English expert, I'll field this one: > Also, can any of you English experts confirm this: I heard once that > "myriad" was an adjective, not a noun (as in "...and myriad other > academic and business software packages" rather than "...and a myriad of > other..."). I just checked on dictionary.com and it said both are > correct, although many people do not consider the noun form as correct.
It's definitely both a noun AND an adjective: " myriad: Throughout most of its history in English, myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the early 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both uses in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge�s �Myriad myriads of lives.� The poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word murias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or as an adjective, but the noun murias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective murias was used only in poetry. " -- http://www.bartleby.com/64/pages/page121.html -- http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=67&q=myriad -- http://www.write101.com/W.Tips161.htm -- http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98nov/9811wdct.htm -- http://www.editingandwritingservices.com/commonmistakes.html -- www.m-w.com -- www.yourdictionary.com Grammatically yours, Ryan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
