Source: Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary

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Okay, so I’m attempting to get this train wreck of a week back on track here with a regularly scheduled wordy Wednesday. I missed my Proust post yesterday, but honestly I was feeling so full of ennui (next week’s word?) that I could not manage it.

Plethora is one of those words that I enjoy using and I have never looked it up before. Honestly, most words are this way for me. I learn words in context and sometimes that context is wrong or a modern usage skewed a great deal from the original. My understanding and usage is plethora = excess. Would knowing that plethora is associated with blood and bodily related issues caused a pause in my usage? No, I still like the way the word rolls out of my mouth. Fancy!

Plus, it works with so many things, non-blood related, like:

I have a plethora of laundry to do.

My son broke out into a plethora of angry hives after he ate an egg this morning.

Note, all of these examples are drawn from real life today. Exciting times here. At any rate, I can’t even imagine using this word (I’m not going to type it again because it is starting to look funny to me) in the original 16th century usage.