Myriad … noun or not?

// April 11th, 2006 // Personal

This came up during an interesting Sunday evening drink in Dix Neuf.

When using the work Myriad (i.e. a large indeterminable number) should one use the prefix a or not?

For example “the waterfall cast a myriad of droplets” sounds ok but so does “the waterfall radiated myriad rainbow colours”

Discuss.

And before some smarty pants points me at answers.com I’ve already looked and have found their explanation to be most satisfactory – just trying to start some kind of dialogue in the old comments.

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No Responses to “Myriad … noun or not?”

  1. Dan says:
    April 11, 2006 at 2:10 pm

    People generally use it as a noun, but I think officially it should be an adjective. People say “a myriad of people”, but it should be “myriad people”.

  2. Rob says:
    April 11, 2006 at 3:35 pm

    That’s what I thought. As a description of quantity it is a noun – a hundred, a thousand, a bucket load – but equally when using numeric adjectives the a is not required – thousands and thousands… I suppose it does require that you apply an “of” though

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