myriorama

English

Etymology

Ancient Greek

Noun

myriorama (plural myrioramas)

1. A picture made up of several smaller pictures, drawn upon separate cards so that they can be combined in many different ways, thus producing a great variety of scenes or landscapes.
   • 2005, Print Quarterly - Volume 22, Issue 4, page 447:

     In 1825, Brès would produce the ultimate myriorama—a 36-card componium Pittoresque.

   • 2018, Michael Twyman, Encyclopedia of Ephemera:

     Popular in the 1820s, often as a children's toy, the myriorama (Greek: many views) originated in Germany.

   • 2020, Hala Mreiwed, Mindy R. Carter, Claudia Mitchell, Art as an Agent for Social Change, page 173:

     Typically, myriorama are vertical segments, but, in my activity kit, they are aligned horizontally to accommodate nine postcards which are cut into three segments each and are spiral bound.

2. A traveling roadshow in the late 19th century featuring painted canvases that move on rollers to music (panoramas), reenactments of historical events with moving models (dioramas), variety acts, and lectures, all accompanied by sound effects, light effects, and smoke.
   • 2015, Susan Gardiner, Secret Ipswich:

     In September 1900, the Ipswich Journal reported that a demonstration of Poole's Myriorama had taken place at the public hall: 'Whenever Mr Joseph Poole comes to Ipswich with his famous myriorama, the public can rely on seeing something new, and this is the secret of its popularity.'

   • 2021, Ian Friel, Breaking Seas, Broken Ships:

     Shows of this kind were hugely popular – the Poole family had six separate Myriorama shows on tour around the country in the mid-1890s – nowadays it might be called 'infotainment'.

   • 2023, Fergal O'Leary, Ireland and Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century, page 108:

     Panoramas, be they a myriorama or a diorama type, provided audiences with an immersive visual experience and were hugely popular.

3. (figurative) A shifting collection of ideas, locations, descriptions, or experiences.
   • 1869, William Alfred Peffer, Myriorama: A View of Our People and Their History, Together With the Principles Underlying, and the Circumstances Attending The Rise and Progress of the American Union:

     Before He spake however, something seemed to say, Or intimate, that one superior mind Was near, or coming, and a view of that Majestic myriorama plainly told that half at least were stirred by some Unknown, though vigorous and potent cause.

   • 1994, Richard Pearce, Molly Blooms: A Polylogue on "Penelope" and Cultural Studies, page 126:

     Molly's myriorama fuses these elements— spectacle and drama, commentary and song— in her complex, revolving mental kaleidescope.

   • 2008, Robert L. Root, The Nonfictionist's Guide, page 89:

     It didn't take long to realize that I'd blundered onto a metaphor for building my book. I would be a myriorama, scenes from an endless landscape, across both time and place. It doesn't matter whether the book that emerges out of this process ends up being the prose equivalent of a myriorama; what matters is that I have a structure that serves to set this journey in motion.

Related terms

• diorama

References

• OED
• “myriorama”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.