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 wel...