plethory

plethory

English

Etymology

Alteration of Latin plethora after +‎ -y.

Noun

plethory (plural plethories)

1. (medicine, now archaic) A plethora. [from 17th c.]
   • 1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, “[XXVIII Sermons Preached at Golden Grove; Being for the Summer Half-year, […].] ”, in ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1654, OCLC 1051524189:

     [T]he appetite falls down like a horseleech, when it is ready to burst with putrefaction and an unwholesome plethory […] .

   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus:

     The disease of the state is a plethory, / Who so fit to reduce it as I?

2. (obsolete) A plethora; a dangerous excess of something. [17th–19th c.]
   • 1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford 2008, p. 921:

     ‘It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty.’