octupletn.

1852 A. De Morgan Let. 12 Feb. in R. P. Graves Life Sir W. R. Hamilton (1889) III. 338 Then if AB to BC, CD to DE, EF to FA, compounded, also give a ratio of equality, why not say ABCDEF are harmonics? We have then an harmonic quadruplet and sextuplet, and we might have octuplets, &c.

1898 J. Stainer Stainer & Barrett's Dict. Musical Terms (rev. ed.) 326/2 Octuplet, a group of eight notes which are to be played in the time of six.

1950 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 36 244 Another pair [of molecules] may..be attracted; so we may expect formation of pairs, quadruplets, octuplets, etc.

1981 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 78 758/2 The disappearance of the tyrosine α-proton octuplet.

1983 18th-cent. Stud. 16 398 The composers of the music could not resist the temptation to do a complete storm,..raindrops.., thunderbolts.., lightning flashes (octuplets or sextuplets running up and down the scale).

1904 Amer. Jrnl. Anat. 3 394 In the only authentic case of octuplets which I have been able to find (Boston Med. & Surg. Journal, Sept. 26, 1872) there were five boys and three girls.

1948 Jrnl. Heredity 39 205/2 The alleged case of octuplets all born alive and all living for a month is much more difficult to accept.

1979 Daily Tel. 18 Aug. 1/6 Two of the octuplets born to a Naples woman on Thursday died yesterday, leaving five alive.

1984 Arch. Gynecol. 234 283 An octuplet pregnancy with survival of all liveborn babies in a woman treated with gonadotropins is described.

1991 E. Lax Woody Allen iv. 232 That she would settle on me, Harold Cohen, scrawny, long-nosed, twenty-four-year-old budding dramatist and whiner, was a non-sequitur on a par with octuplets.