I've learned some fairly disturbing news today. I have been using the word "myriad" since 7th grade. It was a word-of-the-day in Mrs. Hacken's class, and I kind of liked it, so it stuck. I used it in my own writing and conversation. ("A myriad of donuts," for example, is something that would not be unusual for me to say.) Lately I've been running across it a lot in some of my articles, and they were using it strangely, I thought. So I looked it up. Imagine my dismay when Merriam-Webster's told me that the way I have been using it for over a decade--as a noun--is now frowned upon by many scholars. What? Why?! It even goes so far as to point out that those people are mistaken in their belief that it was originally an adjective. Doesn't it just sound better as a noun? "A myriad of yo-yos" versus "myriad yo-yos"? I don't care if it adds three extra characters--I think it sounds better. Probably because it reminds me of "pyramid," which also works great as a noun, and a nice visual whenever you want to think about a myriad of things.
Let's look at one more example of the noun versus adjective use. And this is not biased or meant to sway your opinion at all, but which usage do you prefer in the following sentence: "A myriad of cute, fluffy, adorable baby bunnies were viciously attacked and consumed by myriad wolves." See? Don't you feel better about the beginning of that sentence? I know I sure do.
I may need to go home now and take some personal time to process this. The news is upsetting me on myriad levels.
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