“The Combining Form Multi- in English Compounds”

This paper describes the use of the combining form (CF) multi- in the English lexicon. Multi- belongs to the closed class of CF, which are lexical items of Latin and Greek origin, productive in English throughout the centuries in the formation of both specialized and general vocabulary. Based on the historical information provided by the Oxford English Dictionary and the search tools of its online version, this article analyzes the English neo-classical compounds formed with multi-, observing their morpho-syntactic patterns, meanings, chronological distribution and specialized fields of usage. The analysis has revealed that 19th century compounds with multi- belong to scientific vocabulary, mainly to botany, zoology and medicine, whereas 20th century items have gradually entered less restricted domains and the general language.