manifoldness
(ˈmænɪfəʊldnɪs)
[OE. maniᵹfealdnis, f. maniᵹfeald manifold: see -ness.]
1. The quality or condition of being manifold; varied character; multiplicity.
| c 950 Lindisf. Gosp. Matt. xii. 34 Ex abundantia cordis, from moniᵹfaldnisse hearta. c 1050 Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 469/14 Perplexitans [read perplexitas], manifealdnes. 1611 Cotgr., Multicuple, a manifoldnesse, great multiplication. a 1631 Donne Serm. lxiii. 632 In the manifoldnesse, and in the weightinesse, and in the everlastingnesse thereof [sc. of Fire and Wormes]. 1809–10 Coleridge Friend (ed. 3) III. 145 The inordinate number and manifoldness of facts and phænomena. 1877 E. Caird Philos. Kant ii. viii. 347 The consciousness of self..as one in all the manifoldness and difference of its perceptions. 1894 T. H. Ward Eng. Poets, Clough IV. 590 Clough's poetry, marked as so much of it is by indecision and manifoldness of view. |
2. Math. (See quots.) Cf. manifold C. 3.
(A transl. of Riemann's mannigfaltigkeit.)
| 1873 Clifford tr. Riemann's Bases of Geom. in Nature VIII. 14–17. 1876 Nature (1877) XV. 515/1 We see..that..the conception of space is a particular variety of a wider and more general conception. This wider conception, of which time and space are particular varieties, it has been proposed to denote by the term manifoldness. 1883 Chrystal in Encycl. Brit. XV. 629 One word has recently come into use which is very convenient, inasmuch as it draws attention..to the prime object of mathematical contemplation, viz. ‘manifoldness’... The assemblage of points on a surface is a twofold manifoldness; the assemblage of points in tridimensional space is a threefold manifoldness; the values of a continuous function of n arguments are n-fold manifoldness. |