many-sided, a.
(Stress variable.)
1. Having many sides; multilateral.
| 1660 Barrow Euclid i. Def. xxii, Many-sided figures are such as are contained under more right lines than four. a 1822 Shelley Def. Poetry Pr. Wks. 1888 II. 16 The drama..is a prismatic and many-sided mirror. 1847 Smeaton Builder's Man. 172 To find the area of irregular polygons, or many-sided figures. |
2. fig. Having many aspects, bearings, capacities, or possibilities. (Suggested by Ger. vielseitig.)
| 1843 Gladstone Glean. (1879) V. 37 Of many-sided aspect. 1868 ― Juv. Mundi x. (1870) 402 With many-sided intelligence. 1882 Farrar Early Chr. II. 337 Since Christianity is manysided. 1892 Gardiner Student's Hist. Eng. 489 Raleigh was..a many-sided man; soldier, sailor, statesman, historian, and poet. |
Hence manyˈsidedness.
| 1833 Lytton Eng. & English (ed. 2) II. 97 Wordsworth..has not, it is true, ‘the many-sidedness’ of Göthe. 1837 C. Lofft Self-formation I. 275 It tends to give him the decantatum illud of the Germans,..manysidedness. 1866 Sat. Rev. 19 May 584/1 What men gain in manysidedness it is said they are losing in vigour. 1870 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. i. (1873) 345 The many-sidedness of truth. |