Myriad Myriads

The largest influence on my love of language, words, and sounds was my father.  He has a very similar love of them.  He is always playing with words and phrases.  Ironically, he also hates how people use (or misuse) the language.  He hates it when people say "The reason is because" (the reason is that).  He hates it when people use 'loan' as a verb (it should be 'lend').  And he hates it when people say, "A myriad of. . .".

'Myriad' is an adjective, not a noun.  Except that it isn't.  One day, I actually looked it up.  "Usage: Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase a myriad of, seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective. As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it."

Anybody so dogmatic as to believe that a word can only be used in the way that it always has must accept that 'myriad' is a noun.  Anybody who understands and accepts that language is alive and everchanging may use it in any form that they like.

This was a pretty important thing for me.  It showed a number of important realizations.  For one, most supposedly educated people aren't.  They don't know anything but the rules they've been told; they've never questioned them or researched their veracity.  The other thing is that none of it matters.  The fact that 'myriad' as a noun is older (and thus more correct?) has no effect on its present usage.  Even if 'myriad' is supposed to be used as a verb, it wouldn't mater.  That's simply an evolution. It's nothing to be feared; instead we should accept and embrace it.

Find a rule you know very well about proper English usage.  Now break it.  Break it a lot. Have myriad myriads of broken rules.  Get other people to start saying them and they'll be real.