octolingual

Adjective

octolingual (not comparable)

1. Written in eight languages.
   • In 1539 Estienne reversed his Dictionarium, a direct descendant of his own Latin Thesaurus, into the Dictionnaire that was the ancestor of Nicot’s French Thresor. He did this because when popular demand required a reprinting of the octolingual Calepin, Estienne found this work unacceptable and a...1985, Dictionaries, number 7, page 34
   • Makkai is the author of Cantio Nocturna Peregrini Aviumque [Nightsong of the Wanderer and the Birds], an octolingual book of poetry honoring Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 250 anniversary in 1999.1997, In Quest of the 'Miracle Stag': The Poetry of Hungary, volume II, published 2003, →ISBN, page 537
2. Characterized by the use or presence of eight languages.
   • The Doktor was in the highest dudgeon. He kept shouting "pigs, louts, goatherds" in several languages; then he exhausted his octolingual vocabulary on words like Communists, deviationists, Reactionaries, and Imperialist dogs.1951, The American Mercury, volume 72, page 154
   • When I visited Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories some months ago I learned that one of the towns in the north—I am sorry, I forget which one—declared itself octolingual, to represent all of the languages spoken including, I might add, English and French, and six different native languages in...1990, Canada. Parliament. House of Commons, House of Commons Debates, Official Report, volume 131
3. Knowing eight languages.
   • Also an octolingual Yugoslavian who was a lieutenant in the French Foreign Legion and was imprisoned in Buchenwald during the war, a Berlin business man, an economics professor and a girl who was the private secretary for Dinah Shore for three years.1964, Technograph, volume 80, pages 32, 34
   • The faith he [Keshub Chunder Sen] preached was the Brahmo Samaj, founded in 1828 by the octolingual (Bengali, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, English, Greek, Latin and Hebrew) scholar Raja Rammohun Roy.2004, Lucy Moore, Maharanis: A Family Saga of Four Queens, published 2006, →ISBN