''legion'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''legion'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

legion - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

Adjective

legion (not comparable)

• Numerous; vast; very great in number.
  • ✤ Synonyms: multitudinous, numerous
  • ✤ Russia’s labor and capital resources are woefully inadequate to overcome the state’s needs and vulnerabilities, which are legion.
  • ✤ dissatisfied customers and their legion complaints
  • ✤ Shepard: Where are the rest of the Reapers? Are you the last of your kind?
    We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom.¹

Noun

legion (plural legions)

• (military, Ancient Rome) The major unit or division of the Roman army, usually comprising 3000 to 6000 infantry soldiers and 100 to 200 cavalry troops.
  • ✤ Meronyms: cohort, maniple, century
• (military) A combined arms major military unit featuring cavalry, infantry, and artillery, including historical units such as the British Legion, and present-day units such as the Spanish Legion and the French Foreign Legion.
  • ✤ Coordinate terms: combat team, regimental combat team, brigade combat team
• (military) A large military or semi-military unit trained for combat; any military force; an army, regiment; an armed, organized and assembled militia.
  • ✤ Efforts to unionize were routinely met with clubbings, shootings, jailings, blacklistings and executions, perpetrated not only by well-armed legions of company goons, but also by police officers, deputies, National Guardsmen and even regular soldiers.²
• (often Legion or the Legion) A national organization or association of former servicemen, such as the American Legion.
• A large number of people; a multitude.
  • ✤ Synonyms: host, mass, multitude, sea, throng
  • ✤ Their complicated affairs are managed by a legion of accountants.
  • ✤ With all due respect to Aaron, every era seems to have had its legion of wrongdoers and shortcutters who used whatever science was available to get an edge.³
• (often plural) A great number.
  • ✤ where one Sin has entered, Legions will force their Way through the fame Breach.⁴
  • ✤ Afternoon TV mainstays like Leila Benitez and Bobby Ledesma of Darigold Jamboree gradually gave way to teenage loveteams Vi and Bot and Guy and Pip who had legions of fans watching their shows and movies and listening to their records.⁵
  • ✤ * Legions of lawyers make use of codes and loopholes like the EB-5 program in the United States, whereby anyone who invests $500,000to$1 million can gain a visa; […]*⁶
  • ✤ It was a tantalizing promise, delivered with Donald Trump’s trademark panache: As dealmaker in chief, he would quickly end world conflicts that had defied his predecessors and their nattily dressed legions of career diplomats.⁷
• (dated, taxonomy) A group of orders inferior to a class; in scientific classification, a term occasionally used to express an assemblage of objects intermediate between an order and a class.

Verb

legion (third-person singular simple present legions, present participle legioning, simple past and past participle legioned)

• (transitive) To form into legions.

Etymology

Attested (in Middle English, as legioun) around 1200, from Old French legion, from Latin legiō, legionem, from legō (“to gather, collect”); akin to legend, lecture. Doublet of León, which was borrowed from Spanish.

Generalized sense of “a large number” is due to an allusive phrase in Mark 5:9, “My name is Legion, for we are many”.⁸

Pronunciation

• enPR: lē ′ jən⁹
• (Received Pronunciation, Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈliː.d͡ʒən/
• (General American, Canada, Scotland) IPA: /ˈli.d͡ʒən/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Rhymes: -iːdʒən
• Hyphenation: le‧gion⁹

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Saren’s private lab, Virmire: ↩

2. 2009 February 22, Kevin Baker, “Blood on the Street”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 18 August 2022: ↩

3. 2009 July 31, William C. Rhoden, “Baseball Players’ Silence Led to Loud Drip of Names”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[2]}$, archived from the original on 26 November 2022: ↩

4. 1735, John Rogers (Canon of Wells.), “Sermon XV. Universal Obedience to the Laws of God, the indispensable Obligation of Christians”, in Nineteen Sermons on several occasions ‎${}^{[3]}$: ↩

5. 2002, Pia B. Gutierrez, The changing face of the Filipino, page 35: ↩

6. 2019 May 28, Zachary Karabell, “How Hidden Billions Are Making the Rich Richer”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[4]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 17 July 2020: ↩

7. 2025 April 24, Ned Temko, “Trump’s ‘quick fix’ approach to diplomacy slow to yield results”, in The Christian Science Monitor ‎${}^{[5]}$, archived from the original on 24 July 2025: ↩

8. WEB Mark 5:9: He asked him, “What is your name?” He said to him, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” ↩

9. “legion”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN. ↩ ↩²

Link to original

Secondary

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