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:
      [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, published 2008, page 921:
      ‘It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty.’
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