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many a. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
many a, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
many a in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
many a you have here. The definition of the word
many a will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of
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English
Determiner
many a
- Being one of a large number, each one of many; belonging to an aggregate or category, considered singly as one of a kind.
There is many a true word spoken in jest.
Many a flower is born to blush unseen.
1608–1641, Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, edited by Theron Wilber Haight, The Divine Weeks of Josuah Sylvester, Waukesha, Wis., USA: H. M. Youmans, published 1908, page 150:Know then that God, to the end He be not thought, / A powerless judge, here plagueth many a fault, / And many a fault leaves here unpunished, / That men may also His last judgment dread.
1908 April 11, “The Coal-Miners and the Wage-Scale”, in The Literary Digest, volume 36, number 15, page 507:If the 250,000 miners, which threaten to stop work, go out on strike there is likely to be many an idle mill beside the water courses and many a factory with silent spindles.
1908, W B M Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:So this was my future home, I thought! Certainly it made a brave picture. I had seen similar ones fired-in on many a Heidelberg stein. Backed by towering hills, […] a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.
1914, David Lloyd George, The Great War, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, Limited, page 3:Many a crime has being committed in its name: there are some being committed now.
2017 January 19, Peter Bradshaw, “T2 Trainspotting review—choose a sequel that doesn't disappoint”, in The Guardian:Danny Boyle's T2 Trainspotting is everything I could reasonably have hoped for—scary, funny, desperately sad, with many a bold visual flourish.
Usage notes
- Many a or an is followed by a singular noun. If the resulting noun phrase is used as the grammatical subject of a clause, the verb it controls is also singular (the idiom is distributive rather than aggregate in sense). The use of a versus an follows the usage notes detailed for the article an.
Alternative forms
- many an (used before a word starting with a vowel sound)
Derived terms
Translations
being one of a large number, each one of many; belonging to an aggregate or category, considered singly as one of a kind
See also
Anagrams