multitudinous
adjective
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“I am large, I contain multitudes.” So wrote Walt Whitman in his most celebrated poem, “Song of Myself.” He was expressing his ability to hold within himself contradictory statements, facets, opinions, beliefs, etc. Another, if less poetic, way of saying “I contain multitudes” might be “I am multitudinous,” using the sense of that five-syllable word meaning “existing in or consisting of innumerable elements or aspects.” Multitudinous doesn’t have a lot of meanings—three to be exact—but each one concerns, well, a lot. In addition to serving Whitmanesque purposes as noted above, multitudinous is the kind of highly expressive word that you can rely upon when you want something a little more emphatic than plain old numerous, as in “multitudinous possibilities.” Lastly, its original sense—still in use today—is a synonym of populous meaning “including a multitude of individuals,” as in “the multitudinous city.”
Examples of multitudinous in a Sentence
Adam Roy, Outside, 31 Oct. 2025
The film discussed at greatest length in this saga of addiction and recovery is Welcome to New York, the first project that Ferrara got in the can after kicking his multitudinous chemical habits.
—Nick Pinkerton, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
Launched as Holton’s artistic inquiry into his own Chinese heritage, the project has evolved into a profound examination of family dynamics, migration, and cultural hybridity in contemporary New York, where the American identity is multitudinous.
—Natasha Gural, Forbes.com, 11 June 2025
On her multitudinous podcast appearances, the talk often turns to therapy.
—Kerry Howley, Vulture, 24 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for multitudinous
Cite this Entry
“Multitudinous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multitudinous. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025.
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multitudinous
adjective
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