Plethora vs Alot - What's the difference?
plethora | alot |
(usually, followed by of) An excessive amount or number; an abundance.
* Jeffrey
(medicine, archaic) An excess of red blood cells or bodily humours.
Pronounced: .
* 2000 , Teaching Secondary English, ed. Daniel Sheridan. [in a tenth-grade student's paper]
* 2003 , Matt Janacone, Three by the Sea [http://print.google.com/print?id=CesAE2xl68QC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&sig=X8TjIfaBBBesXWW1E38K-BUtUPU]
* 2005 , Aphrodite Jones, Cruel Sacrifice [From the suicidal patient's own writing.] [http://print.google.com/print?id=KtlMQCtBzygC&pg=PA248&lpg=PA248&sig=2mA_bCMZr0l0dCLfhRWe4cBdmd4]
alot]
* 2004 , The Cambridge Guide to English Usage'' also compares ''alot'' to ''awhile.'' It states ''alot'' to be “still regarded as nonstandard” and notes 50 appearances in the British National Corpus, “almost entirely from three sources: e-mail, TV autocue data, and TV newscripts.” It suggests that some usages of ''alot'' in typewritten use are to be considered merely typos of the standard ''a lot though its appearance in handwriting and typescript is “more significant, as the shadow of things to come.” [http://print.google.com/print?id=UA5syoe1kc0C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&sig=rtyA7J19FLKXuJ-65S78fDEnON8]
As nouns the difference between plethora and alot
is that plethora is (usually|followed by of) an excessive amount or number; an abundance while alot is .As an adverb alot is
.plethora
English
Noun
(en noun)- The menu offers a plethora of cuisines from around the world.
- He labours under a plethora of wit and imagination.
Quotations
* 1849 , *: I pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man, with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his, gave him more gazes than he sent. * 1927 , (The Aftermath of Gothic Fiction) *: Meanwhile other hands had not been idle, so that above the dreary plethora of trash like Marquis von Grosse's Horrid Mysteries ..., there arose many memorable weird works both in English and German.Synonyms
* glut, myriad, surfeit, superfluity, slewSee also
* myriadReferences
* “plethora]” listed in the [2nd Ed.; 1989
Pronounced: .
Anagrams
* ----alot
English
Adverb
(-)Noun
(-)- There was alot' of sex discrimination in the 60’s. For one thing there was no sports for girls and in ' alot of schools the female teachers were not allowed to get married or they could be fired. [http://print.google.com/print?id=ejtdcf-taQkC&pg=PA346&lpg=PA346&sig=t0Sp87KqxsH-UGYklzl72NMUz1Q]
- It was alot' of lumber, '''alot''' of condos, and Joe did not know '''alot''' about either of them, only that it was '''alot''' of money; he hated to throw his money into something he did not know ' alot about.
- She talked about death: “My philosophy on life is it could be alot' better. Like I would’ve never gotten into this mess if I wouldn’t have tried to commit suicide. Actually I was just trying to make myself sick. But then again it could be '''''alot worse! [...]”
Usage notes
This spelling of "a lot" is frequent in informal writing but not generally accepted by arbiters of English usage. Others view it as a legitimate s. * 1993 , The Columbia Guide to Standard American English'' calls ''alot “substandard” and notes that it is “increasingly found in Informal correspondence and student writing” and “has as yet received no sanction in print except on the op-ed and sports pages.”[http://books.google.com/books?id=L2ChiO2yEZ0C&q=alot* 1996 , The American Heritage Book of English Usage'' states that “''alot'' is still considered an error in print” but notes that standard words have formed by fusion of the article with a noun, such as ''another'' and ''awhile,'' and suggests the possibility that ''alot may, like them, eventually enter standard usage. [http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0200.html] * 2004 , Jack Lynch Guide to Grammar and Style (entry dated 2004) flatly states this to be a two-word expression. [http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html
