What is the difference between The church has endured many a pandemic in its long history and The church has endured many pandemics in its long history ?Feel free to just provide example sentences.

As you know, the meaning is (virtually?) identical. In terms of tone and nuance, I wonder whether there is a certain amount of variation in this, depending on the age or literary background of the reader or listener? In my opinion, the everyday usage here is "many pandemics ..."

"Many a " has a slightly formal or portentous tone, in my opinion; it's what you might expect in an aphorism. "There's many a slip, twixt cup and lip." "Many a true word is spoken in jest." On the other hand, we have "Many hands make light work," and "Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan."

So is there a difference to tease out here ...?

I think perhaps there is.

In modern or everyday English we'd expect "many". In older written texts or in proverbs, sayings or aphorisms, we might find the slightly older-feeling or literary-feeling "many a".

"Many" will always, I think, carry a sense of the plural noun that follows; a sense of the collective, the group: very many people died in the pandemic.

"Many a", perhaps, adds a little twist: the sense of the individual within the group. This brings the experience or the description back to the individual person or event.

"Many hands make light work" might offer a clue: see how the meaning changes if we go to "Many a hand makes light work." In the first, it is the collective, the group effort that produces success. In the second, many indivivual hands enjoy that success, separately.

Which of these do we want to bring out; the collective, together, or the individual, within a larger context ...?

So, taking this to the original quotes: "The church has endured many a pandemic in its long history," and "The church has endured many pandemics in its long history."

The latter reads entirely neutrally; this is a statement of fact. There have been many pandemics.

The former, though, adds just a touch of dismissiveness. We are in a pandemic; the most recent of many. This one will be overcome, like the others.

All this is "In my opinion," of course! I hope this helps.


https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/eng...

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/eng...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/many...