Plethora, she wrote

There is a scene in the 1986 film Three Amigos where El Guapo, a warlord surrounded by literal piñatas, turns to his henchman Jefe and asks with complete sincerity: “Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?”. Just like Jefe, my student had probably just learned that word when she wrote it 3 times in 2 consecutive paragraphs.

What she had not yet learned is what the word actually means. Plethora does not mean abundance. It does not mean “many” or “plenty” or “a lot of.” It comes from a Greek medical term for excess blood in the body — a dangerous surplus, something gone wrong. A plethora is not a generous amount. It is too much. It has a negative connotation baked into its etymology, which is precisely why using it four times in one paragraph is, unintentionally, the most accurate thing she wrote. She had a plethora of plethoras

The deeper issue is that this is how vocabulary acquisition actually works. You find a word, you fall in love with it, you use it everywhere until someone finally tells you — or you notice yourself — that you overdid it. Good teachers do not punish this. They name it: this is what overuse looks like, and here is what the word is actually doing, and here is where it earns its place and how it needs an article or not. Plethora almost always needs an article — ‘a plethora’ or ‘the plethora.’

Would I say she had a plethora of piñatas? No. I would say she had enthusiasm. And a new word to learn: overuse.