multitude

The story

1. Latin · derived frommultitūdō“great amount or number of people or things”
2. Old French · derived frommultitude“crowd of people; diversity, wide range”
3. Middle English · inherited frommultitude
4. English todaymultitude

From Middle English multitude, multitud, multytude (“(great) amount or number of people or things; multitudinous”), borrowed from Old French multitude (“crowd of people; diversity, wide range”), or directly from its etymon Latin multitūdō (“great amount or number of people or things”), from multus (“many; much”) + -tūdō (suffix forming abstract nouns indicating a state or condition). The English word is analysable as multi- + -itude.

Words from the same roots