overmultitude

English

	A user has added this entry to requests for verification⁽⁺⁾
	If it cannot be verified that this term meets our attestation criteria, it will be deleted. Feel free to edit this entry as normal, but do not remove `{{rfv}}` until the request has been resolved.

Etymology

From over- +‎ multitude.

Verb

overmultitude (third-person singular simple present overmultitudes, present participle overmultituding, simple past and past participle overmultituded)

(obsolete, nonce word, transitive) To outnumber.
- 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:
  The herds would overmultitude their lords, The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, And so bestud with stars, that they below Would grow inured to light, and come at last To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.
- 1784, William Godwin, Imogen:
  The soil would be oppressed with her own fertility; the herds would overmultitude their lords; and the crouded air would be darkened with the plumes of its numerous inhabitants.

Noun

overmultitude (plural overmultitudes)

An large excess in numbers.
- 1643, MSS. of the Borough of King's Lynn:
  it is informed to this House that not only a great companie are now to come into this burge, but that an overmultitude of such strangers will suddenly pester the said burgh;
- 1903, ‎Hans Claude Hamilton, ‎Ernest George Atkinson, Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, page 217:
  […] and having considered with the best foresight we can how, in this great inequality of numbers, Her Majesty's forces might best be employed, to answer the service in all parts, whereby these barbarous proud rebels might be brought to chastisement, we see not that, in such an odds and overmultitude of the traitors above her Majesty's forces, I, the Deputy, shall be able to do that against them which both I would and ought
- 1928, Plutarch, Roland Orvil Baughman, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes -Volume 5, page 53:
  For when Agesilaus counselled him to trye it by battell as soone as he could, and not to prolonge this warre against ignoraunt men that had no skill to fight, but yet for their overmultitude, might intrenche him rounde about, and prevent him in divers thinges: then he beganne to feare and suspect him more, and thereuppon retyred into a great citie well walled about, and of great strength.