"contain multitudes" meaning in English

See contain multitudes in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

IPA: /kənˌteɪn ˈmʌltɪtjuːdz/ [Received-Pronunciation], /-t͡ʃ-/ [Received-Pronunciation], /kənˌteɪn ˈmʌltəˌt(j)udz/ [General-American] Audio: En-us-contain multitudes.ogg Forms: contains multitudes [present, singular, third-person], containing multitudes [participle, present], contained multitudes [participle, past], contained multitudes [past]
Etymology: Coined by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) in his poem “Song of Myself” published in Leaves of Grass (1855): see the quotation. Etymology templates: {{coinage|en|Walt Whitman|nat=the American|nobycat=1|occ=poet}} Coined by the American poet Walt Whitman Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=contain multitudes}} contain multitudes (third-person singular simple present contains multitudes, present participle containing multitudes, simple past and past participle contained multitudes)
  1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To have a complex and apparently paradoxical nature; to be inconsistent, especially in a way that is ultimately admirable or noble. Wikipedia link: Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself Tags: idiomatic, intransitive Translations (to have a complex and apparently paradoxical nature): olla moninainen (Finnish)

Inflected forms

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          "ref": "1855 July 4, Walt Whitman, “[Song of Myself]”, in Leaves of Grass, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.: [James and Andrew Rome], →OCLC, page 55:",
          "text": "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then … I contradict myself; / I am large … I contain multitudes.",
          "type": "quote"
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          "ref": "1970, Bernard Benstock, Sean O’Casey, Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, →OCLC:",
          "text": "Mirror in My House is both a portrait of the artist ([Seán] O'Casey himself) and a portrait of an artist (a fictional John-Johnny-Sean Casside who contains multitudes), yet it is the unrelenting single vision of a particular personality with a fixed point of view.",
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          "text": "[Sergei] Diaghilev would show Europe that Russia was large and contained multitudes: multitudes of social classes and occupations, and multitudes of indigenous musical styles, not all of them \"Asiatic\" or peasant.",
          "type": "quote"
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          "ref": "2020 January 28, Lindsey Sullivan, “Watch Les Miz Tour Javert Preston Truman Boyd’s Luminous Performance of ‘Stars’”, in Broadway Buzz, archived from the original on 2023-06-07:",
          "text": "In taking on this new role, Boyd had learned that Les Miz's \"bad guy\" contains multitudes—not unlike the stars he sings about.",
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        "(intransitive, idiomatic) To have a complex and apparently paradoxical nature; to be inconsistent, especially in a way that is ultimately admirable or noble."
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      "sense": "to have a complex and apparently paradoxical nature",
      "word": "olla moninainen"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.