Language of the Day: Plethora
The Language of the Day Blog is a weekly blog post by our instructor, Jordan. Each week will introduce a useful phrase in English and tell a story about life in Vancouver. Tune in every Tuesday for another Language of the Day post!
Language of the Day: Plethora
Meaning: a very large amount or number
Examples:
Last summer my garden yielded such a plethora of tomatoes that I had enough to give some to everyone on my street.
Harold had plenty of time to lament the plethora of cars on the roads as he sat trapped in afternoon gridlock.
The first day of a new job usually comes with a plethora of new tasks
A plethora of people celebrating Holi. a Hindu festival of Colours, Love, and Spring.
A plethora of people celebrating Holi. a Hindu festival of Colours, Love, and Spring.
Why does English have SO many words?! It’s overwhelming, unbelievable — redundant at most. But yet, that’s the beauty of the beast — this plethora of words still doesn’t encompass all that there is in the world.
Some estimates put the number of words in the English language at over one million, but on a daily basis, how many do you use? 50? 100? There are some days when I say even less than that — it’s true!
If you really think about it, fascinating, amazing, interesting, wild, can all be used in the same way, but are somehow totally different. Why does it matter? Why should I carry on learning? One word at a time is like one foot in front of the other. You’ll never know how far you can go if you don’t journey onward.
A fascinating woman put a thought in my head: she said, since English was only 30% verbs — that means we are mostly all about stuff. Things and ideas, but not actions, right?
She was studying her language, Potawatomi, when she made the connection of why we think the way we do. (The link’s down below for her Animacy of Grammar - it’s far more eloquent than anything you’ll find in these letters!).
If you think of your language, what do you notice?
https://xenoflesh.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/robin-wall-kimmerer.pdf