Wednesday Words (11)

Each Wednesday I present to you a loveable word and what it means. These are words that look or sound pleasing. This week I offer you…

Plethora.

This word, suggested to me by Lucy Antoniou, is one I try to use as much as possible. It’s a lovely, fluffy word meaning an excessive amount of something – more than you could need and possibly more than you could want. In my mind it always sounds a bit sarcastic – as if its primary use is when you want to be flippant about something that is scarce (“Oh yes, I’m sure there are a plethora of readers excited about my next blog post!”). Apparently however, it can also be used medically to describe an excess of blood in all or part of the circulatory system. Indeed, this was the original use of plethora which was used as a word medically from the mid-16th-century. It came via Latin from the late Greek work plethein (to be full).