plethory

plural plethories

1. archaicmedicineA plethora.First known use 17th c.

   The disease of the state is a plethory, / Who so fit to reduce it as I?

   1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus

   1 more example

   [T]he appetite falls down like a horseleech, when it is ready to burst with putrefaction and an unwholesome plethory […].

   1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, “[XXVIII Sermons Preached at Golden Grove; Being for the Summer Half-year, […].] ”, in ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1654, →OCLC

2. obsoleteA plethora; a dangerous excess of something.First known use 17th–19th c.

   ‘It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty.’

   1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 921