multiversen.
/ˈmʌltɪvəːs/, U.S. /ˈməltiˌvərs/; see also multi- comb. form. 1.
a. The universe considered as lacking order or a single ruling and guiding power.
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the world > the universe > [noun]
kindlOE
worldc1175
framea1325
creaturec1384
universityc1450
engine?1510
universal1569
universality1577
mass1587
universe1589
all1598
cosmosie1600
macrocosm1602
existence1610
system1610
megacosm1617
cosmos1650
materialism1817
world-all1847
panarchy1848
multiverse1895
metaverse1994
1895 W. James in Internat. Jrnl. Ethics 6 10 Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference, a multiverse, as one might call it, and not a universe.
1899 F. W. O. Ward Eng. Roses iv. 433 Within, without, nowhere and everywhere; Now bedrock of the mighty Multiverse, And then the thinnest wreath of thinnest cloud Inpalpable.
1904 Daily News 11 Oct. 3 [Reporting Sir Oliver Lodge] The only possible alternative was to regard the universe as a result of random chance and capricious disorder, not a cosmos or universe at all, but rather a ‘multiverse’.
1957 Times Lit. Suppl. 11 Oct. 602/1 It is precisely Mr Powys's ever-present contact with the vital, or spiritual, principles within the universe which enables him to explore..the deeper problems of that comparatively small section of the universe—or as he would say multiverse—which constitutes man.
1975 C. L. Burt ESP & Psychol. ii. 34 Modern physics presents us with a heterogeneous multiverse, in place of the homogeneous universe of Newton and Laplace.
1985 O. Sacks Man who mistook Wife xxiv. 219 They live, not in a universe, but in what William James called a ‘multiverse’, of innumerable, exact, and passionately intense particulars.
b. Originally Science Fiction. A hypothetical space or realm of being consisting of a number of universes, of which our own universe is only one; (Physics) the large collection of universes in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which every event at the quantum level gives rise to a number of parallel universes in which each in turn of the different possible outcomes occurs.
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1963 M. Moorcock in Sci. Fiction Adventures 6 No. 32. 54 Jewelled, the multiverse spread around him, awash with life, rich with pulsating energy.
1982 Time (Nexis) 15 Mar. 92 The task of the science-fiction writer, said Dick, ‘is creating multiverses, rather than a universe.’
1990 New Scientist 9 June 37/2 The wormhole picture changes our view of the ‘origin’ of the Universe in a big bang, which is now seen simply as the event corresponding to our Universe branching off from the greater ‘multiverse’, to which we must still be connected by an umbilical wormhole.
1994 Interzone Sept. 27/2 Suddenly there was insight. He could treat it as a single object existing simultaneously at all levels in a multiverse.
1997 M. Rees Before Beginning 3 What's conventionally called ‘the universe’ could be just one member of an ensemble. Countless other universes may exist... This line of thought—the enlarged perspective of the ‘multiverse’—supplies a motive for this book.
2000 Nature 20 Jan. 247/3 Twenty years ago the Multiverse concept would have seemed utterly far-fetched, but now it threatens to become conventional wisdom.
2. figurative. A sphere of very varied possibility, such as the mind or the imagination.
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1987 N. Spinrad Little Heroes 96 How many times had she experienced such a magic moment of reality transformation from on high as the LSD or the mescaline or the peyote began its rush through her brain, as ordinary earth-bound reality dissolved into the multiverse of the infinite possible, taking her spirit with it?
1993 Sci. Fiction Stud. Nov. 457 Postmodernist fiction..assumes that the world is not one, that we function in an ontologically plural multiverse of experience in which the classical subject is decentered and fragmented.
2000 Atlanta Jrnl. & Constit. (Electronic ed.) 25 Dec. One of the hottest insider sites is Inside.com. In addition to television, movies, books and more, it delivers a steady menu of what's new in the multiverse.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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