multiformadj.n.

1603 J. Florio tr. M. de Montaigne Ess. iii. iii. 492 Life is a motion vnequall, irregulare and multiforme.

1667 J. Milton Paradise Lost v. 182 Aire, and ye Elements..that in quaternion run Perpetual Circle, multiform . View more context for this quotation

1744 J. Harris Three Treat. i. 32 Human Life..a Compound of various and multiform Actions.

1785 W. Cowper Task ii. 287 The shifts and turns, Th' expedients and inventions, multiform, To which the mind resorts.

a1817 T. Dwight Trav. New-Eng. & N.-Y. (1821) I. 509 The multiform brogue, which salutes the ears of a traveller in..New-York.

1859 C. Darwin Origin of Species v. 131 The variations..so common and multiform in organic beings under domestication.

1895 Army & Navy Co-op. Soc. Price List 1649 Multiform or Lounge [Hat], in drab only.

1903 H. James Ambassadors vii. xvi. 218 The question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter. Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be..the fruit of his mission?

1955 Times 21 July 7/5 It includes a model, drawings, and photographs of the multiform playhouse which the Questors Theatre at Ealing hopes to build and which could be adapted to five different types of stage.

1989 S. Sontag Aids & Metaphors iii. 29 That AIDS is not a single illness but a syndrome, makes it more a product of definition or construction than even a very complex, multiform illness like cancer.

1893 Ann. Math. 7 154 The multiform function η(z) has the properties, that all the distinct branches η_k(z) which belong to the representation of the positive half of the z-plane are associated with η₀(z) by linear substitutions of the form [etc.].

1942 Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 52 66 Find a power series..defining a multiform analytic function (whose domain of existence, consequently, cannot be a simply connected part of the z-plane).

1990 Jrnl. Physics A 23 l896 It is necessary to find Green functions that are multiform solutions of partial differential equations.

a1849 E. A. Poe Landscape Garden in Wks. (1864) IV. 340 In the multiform of the tree, and in the multicolor of the flower.

1852 H. Rogers Eclipse of Faith 123 When I attempt..to seek the elusive unity in the infinite multiform.

1856 E. B. Browning Aurora Leigh iii. 89 If He spoke To Peter then, He speaks to us the same; The word suits many different martyrdoms, And signifies a multiform of death.

1913 D. H. Lawrence Love Poems 37 You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves,..who fall to earth At last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform?

1998 New Yorker 12 Sept. 102/3 A series of pictures that later became known as ‘Multiforms’—abstract compositions of irregularly shaped blocks of color which appear to float in a shallow, luminous space.