Multiply

How to spell multiply

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce multiply

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does multiply mean?

1. verbTo increase greatly in number, or to perform the arithmetic operation of repeated addition.

Multiply in a sentence

• The accountant taught the apprentice how to multiply two large figures quickly.

• Warm, damp conditions let mould multiply across the bathroom ceiling.

Where does multiply come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English from the Latin multiplicare, which meant to increase greatly or to make many. That verb was built from two pieces: multus, meaning 'much' or 'many', and plicare, meaning 'to fold', so the literal idea was something like 'to many-fold' or to fold a quantity over on itself again and again. English took it through Old French multiplier in the 1200s, when it carried both the everyday sense of growing in number and the arithmetic sense of repeated addition. The plicare 'to fold' root is surprisingly productive, surfacing in relatives such as 'reply', 'apply', and 'complicated', all of which involve folding in some figurative way. Remembering that the ending is the same -ply found in those words helps explain why multiply finishes with -ply rather than the sound-alike -plie.

How the word is built

• multi- (from multus: many)
• -ply (from plicare: to fold)