myriad

The word 'myriad' entered English in the mid-16th century via French or Latin, tracing back to the Greek 'myrias' (genitive 'myriad-'), meaning 'ten thousand'. In ancient Greek, it functioned as a specific, large numeral. The semantic journey from a precise number to an indefinite, vast multitude is a classic example of generalization and hyperbole. The term's adoption into English reflects the Renaissance fascination with classical learning, where it was used first in translations of historical and mathematical texts before broadening into its current figurative sense of an immense, uncountable quantity.

The word is a simplex loanword from Greek. It does not contain separable morphemes in its modern English spelling that retain independent meaning.