Why Do Such a Multitude Prefer ‘Multiple’ Over ‘Many’?

Mark Felt: How many Deep Throats count as ‘multiple’ Deep Throats?

A Lingua Franca reader wrote in recently asking that we investigate the growing use of multiple in news stories where many would do just as nicely. Our editor had also noticed a trend toward the longer word, and Google NGram Viewer seems to confirm it (in books; it doesn’t track news websites):

But why? A few weeks ago William Germano wrote about students writing majority instead of most in their papers. He proposed that, as well as misunderstanding that majority is best used for things whose countability matters (like votes), the students like the word’s relative fanciness. My first thought about multiple was along similar lines: Reporters are opting for a word that they think makes their prose sound more authoritative. Or maybe they just like the ring of it — journalists tend to be voracious readers and thus quick to pick up on language trends. Look at what happened to the verb to limn, a noted favorite of the former New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani, over her tenure on the paper’s books desk (1983-2017).

(Here I think book authors are a fair proxy for journalists.)

So when the New York Times Op-Ed contributor Sara Novic writes about deaf people using “multiple methods of communication and technological support” to interact with hearing people, yes, she could have said “many methods” instead, but maybe she was influenced by a health journalist describing the “multiple forms” of dementia in humans, or a food writer recounting the “multiple batches of nuts and herbs” she had to hand-grind to make a gallon of pesto.

“Multiple batches” feels OK to me because “many batches” doesn’t convey as well the sense that one unit of the thing being discussed would have been enough. Anything more really does feel like many. “Multiple violations of ethics rules” falls into this category, as well as shooting someone “in the chest multiple times.” The Oxford English Dictionary makes the case for multiple when it describes something having several parts (a “multiple occupancy” residential building) and to describe complex bone fractures or other medical conditions.

But it strikes me that journalists also use multiple to suggest many when in fact they’re not sure it’s many (“multiple counts”) or don’t want to admit as much to the reader (“multiple sources”). How many sources do you need to start calling them multiple? I asked around and found the answer was far from fixed. A former New York Daily News reporter said that she would use it for anything more than one source, whereas my friend Stephanie Kirchgaessner, The Guardian’s U.S. investigations correspondent, put the lower limit much higher, at three sources. Is that so much higher? When you’re trying to get insiders to talk to you about the Trump-Russia investigation or secret plans to help Julian Assange flee the U.K., I’d argue it is.

One last Google NGram chart before I leave you to your multiple duties of the day — the rise of “multiple sources” over the past 40-plus years:

I couldn’t help but wonder if Watergate reporting gave license to the rest of us. But I didn’t find cases of Woodward and Bernstein writing about their “multiple sources.” Or even their “many sources.” Instead they talked of “police sources,” “Democratic party sources,” even “exile sources” (describing, I think, former members of the CIA). Specificity over … duplicity? Or am I being too hard on journalists today?