multiply

Formsmultiplies, multiplying, multiplied

Pluralmultiplies

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To perform multiplication on a number, combining it with another factor to find their product.

   Multiply the length by the width to find the area of the rectangle.

   Students learn to multiply two-digit numbers in the third grade.

   Oppositedivide

   Note

   Arithmetic's transitive verb almost always brings by with it: you multiply 3 by 7 to get 21. The number named first is the one acted on, and the result is the product. Felix Salmon, unpicking the White House's tariff formula in Axios in 2025, leaned on its most deflating case: multiplying by 1 makes no difference at all.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To cause something to grow in number, quantity, or extent.

   Investing early can multiply your savings over the course of a career.

   The hasty rollout multiplied the company's risks across every department.

   Similarincrease, boost, magnify, compound

   Oppositereduce, decrease, diminish

   Note

   The verb's senses all unfold from this one. Old French multiplier comes from Latin multiplicō, built from multi "many" and plicō "I fold": to fold something many times over. Here the verb takes a direct object. One learned habit survives in it: writers "multiply authorities", piling up citations, as the Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London did in 1843 on locusts as food. Without an object, the same verb means to grow in number.

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To grow greater in number; to increase over time.

   Without predators, the insects multiplied across the entire valley.

   Problems multiply whenever no one is willing to take charge.

   Similarincrease, grow, proliferate, mushroom

   Oppositedecrease, dwindle, diminish

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To carry out the operation of multiplication.

   He learned to multiply before starting the fourth grade.

   The calculator can multiply faster than anyone in the room.

   Oppositedivide

   Note

   Here the verb drops its object and names the activity itself, the way one says someone is adding or dividing: he had been multiplying. No numbers need be mentioned, and no by follows. Once the figures are named, the construction shifts to multiplying one number by another.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To breed or reproduce, producing more of one's own kind.

   Left unchecked, the pests will multiply through the whole orchard.

   These plants multiply readily from a handful of cuttings.

   Similarbreed, reproduce, propagate, proliferate

6. 6
   adverb

   In many ways or respects at once.

   The findings were multiply confirmed across several independent studies.

   His testimony was multiply contradicted by the other witnesses.

   Similarrepeatedly

   Note

   A different word that happens to share the spelling: multiple plus -ly, not the Latin verb behind the sense of increasing something. It is an adverb with no comparative, so nothing is "more multiply" anything. When the spelling stands in front of an adjective or participle, read it as "in many ways", not as the verb.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A single multiplication, counted as one operation in a calculation or computation.

   A single multiply can be broken into several simpler operations.

   The chip performs one multiply per clock cycle.

   Note

   Computer science turned the verb into a countable noun, plural multiplies, used alongside adds and divides when tallying a program's operations. Byte noted in 1975 that an extended instruction set could double speed "if a lot of multiplies and divides are done". Birdsall and Langdon's Plasma Physics via Computer Simulation (2004) asks for the adds and multiplies in each form. It is technical shorthand rather than general usage.

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