Talk:many a
is on many occasion a variant of on many an occasion? --Backinstadiums (talk) 00:47, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
- No. Ungrammatical. Equinox ◑ 01:04, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
etymology
[edit]How'd many a come to be? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:53, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
many a one : many people
[edit]For Collins many a one "many people" is an idiom. --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:37, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
- I agree. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:40, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
English. The anon who created it, who was probably Wonderfool, who had never read a poem in his/her life, tagged it as poetic. Totally wrong, right? And I'd suggest merging the entry, along with many an, into many. --Quadcont (talk) 11:44, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
- “many a”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. shows that dictionaries include the term, usually as a redirect to many. I suppose what distinguishes many + [Noun] (plural) from many a + [Noun] (singular) is the emphasis on the individuality of the [Noun]. DCDuring TALK 15:46, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
- Not totally wrong. It definitely has a whiff of song/poetry to it – "I've been a wild rover for many a year…", "Many a time and oft on the Rialto…" – these are expressions familiar from songs and literature, not current in contemporary speech except when trying to generate various kinds of archaic/jocular effects. Ƿidsiþ 14:13, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
I did some work on this but didn't remove the label. I will let others decide that. -Mike (talk) 07:39, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
- The poetic label has been removed. I am against merging because many a seems idomatic. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 04:56, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
- Looks cleaned up now Fools can be king (talk) 17:11, 30 June 2023 (UTC)