myriarch means A ruler or commander over 10,000 people, particularly; The commander of a Mongolian tomen.
Why “myriarch” is a great word
A ruler or commander of ten thousand people, specifically the leader of a Mongolian *tümen* or the governor of a myriarchy in Mongolian Tibet. From Ancient Greek μυριάρχης (muriárkhēs) or μυρίαρχος (muríarkhos), from μυρίος (muríos, 'myriad, ten thousand') + -άρχης (-árkhēs) or -αρχος (-arkhos, 'ruler, commander'), itself a calque of Old Persian *baivarapatiš; as a Mongolian title, it is a calque of Mongolian tümen-ü noyon. Unlike a Roman centurion, who held the line with a century of one hundred, or a Greek strategos, whose authority was broad but numerically vague, the myriarch speaks a language of pure, daunting scale. It is the dust raised by ten thousand hooves moving as one, the administrative burden of ten thousand hearths, and the weight of ten thousand loyalties in a single command—a word that reduces the chaos of conquest to a stark, accountable arithmetic, where ten thousand is the threshold where arithmetic becomes awe.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μυριάρχης (muriárkhēs) in Herodotus or μυρίαρχος (muríarkhos) in Xenophon, from μυρίος (muríos, “myriad, ten thousand”) + -άρχης (-árkhēs) or -αρχος (-arkhos, “-arch: ruler, commander”), calque of Old Persian *baivarapatiš.
As a Mongolian commander, Calque of Mongolian tümen-ü noyon.
noun
- A ruler or commander over 10,000 people, particularly; The commander of a Mongolian tomen.
- A ruler or commander over 10,000 people, particularly; The governor of a myriarchy in Mongolian Tibet.
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