Where is "manywhere"

Where is ‘manywhere’?

We see ‘nowhere’ somewhere, ‘somewhere’ everywhere, but do you find ‘manywhere’ anywhere? Wait a minute, yes it is somewhere!

It was a nice Friday afternoon, relaxing in an easy chair, sipping a cup of coffee, I started thinking about some lectures I have to give in December on Group Theory. Michael Artin’s Algebra is a favourite text book of mine, I keep falling back, since the time it appeared as pre print in the early 1990’s. I should admit, I never read it between the lines. So I started glancing through the section on Group action, in the second edition of his book. The second edition is very compact and better organised than the first, but he removed some very good exercises from the first edition, which I very much miss. But that is irrelevant in this context. So, as I started glancing through this section, I stumbled upon a foot note, which caught my attention. It so turned out that it was not a foot note on mathematics but a footnote on the English word, ‘manywhere’. I counter checked with his first edition and found that the word was indeed used by him, but without a foot note. I would have ignored it and presumed it standard, had it been not for the foot note. Because its meaning is so obvious and crystal clear. Well, the foot note reads like this. 

“ Masayoshi Nagata, wanted to use an English word which should mean ‘manywhere’, and he did find it in a dictionary.” By the way, Masayoshi Nagata, is a well known Japanese Mathematician and a great algebraist, particularly known for producing several difficult counter examples!

It made me more curious and I wanted to find out from the dictionary. Alas, I searched 2-3 different editions of famous English dictionaries from my shelf, but did not find it anywhere. So, I appealed to our latest technology, the google search on the  internet, looking for possible free online dictionaries but with no result. So where did Nagata find it, I wondered. Started looking for  any kind of information (free of course) on the web, which would shed some light on my query. At last, I found some answer on Stack Exchange, a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in diverse fields).There was a an answer to this question, a comment, a historical description! 

(Answered by StoneyB, a commercial writer for 20 years, a theatre guy for 30 years before that, as per web information.)

Part of it I quote: 

“Henry James floated the word in an 1894 short story (other early hits are false positives), but it was Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), a distinguished banker and politician and writer on archaeology and evolution, who successfully launched it, in ‘The Scenery of England’, 1902, where he tossed off the sentence ‘Smoothed and polished rocks occur also “manywhere”, if I may coin the word, in our northern districts…’

The coinage excited considerable comment in newspapers and journals; this is representative:

   The new word “manywhere” will undoubtedly find as ready application in ad writing as it has in newspaper offices and general literature, for it is a genuinely useful word, giving expression to an idea that has here to fore had no symbol. It was coined by Lord Avebury, the noted British scientist, and used in a recent book on geology as a fill gap between “somewhere” and “everywhere.” While freely criticized by philologers, it is generally thought that “manywhere” will eventually attain a place in the dictionary. —Printers Ink, a journal for advertisers, June 3, 1903.” 

So that was the best I could gather. It was Lord Avebury, “PC, DL, FRS (30 April 1834 – 28 May 1913), known as Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet from 1865 until 1900, who was an English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath” (wikipedia), who coined the word and made it popular too, in 1902-1903! But it went out of use again!! For a graphic representation (Google Ngram display) of its use, you may refer to Stack Exchange, from where I  gathered this information). Just type, “manywhere”, stack exchange in google search engine, you will find it. 

“History demonstrates that manywhere is ‘an elegant and logical solution’ to a problem which does not exist.” 

From famous Mathematician to accomplished Scientist cum politician cum writer, the journey through the internet for a couple of hours was rewarding indeed. I enjoyed it thoroughly. But still, I have not come across a dictionary yet, which has recorded this word. Was Nagata right or Artin wrong, about ‘manywhere’? I just ponder!

(Parvati Shastri)