“multiple” instead of “many” ?

[user68901]

Anyone else noticed this trend and when and how did it all start?

Multiple is only necessary in certain cases.

"Over the past year, there were many incidents of violence in the town centre."

So you would use multiple only if you were talking about a single night.

"There were multiple violent incidents in the town centre on Halloween night."

It's somehow more dramatic isn't it?

But not always appropriate. I don't know the 'rules' grammatically but know instinctively how to use it.

"Multiple" means "More than one but not very many", so it's a smaller class than "many". "Multiple thousands" would be less than ten thousand, for example. Perfectly reasonable usage that way.

Ah...so "I have multiple green marbles" makes sense...I'm pointing to the fact there are more than one in my collection.

But not "I have many" because there might only be a few.