multi-, mult- +

Consisting of many monstrosities (frightening sizes, shapes, and ugliness).

Operating or having investments in several countries; relating to or including people from several countries.

Describing a corporation or other entity that conducts its operations in many nations rather than only in the country in which it originated or is headquartered.

1. A mathematical expression that is the sum of a number of terms, each of which contains a constant and variables raised to a positive integral power.
2. An expression of two or more terms.

A condition of free enterprise without restriction as to the number of sellers of a given product.

A woman who has borne a live child from each of two or more pregnancies.

1. A description of an animal, especially a mammal, that normally gives birth to two or more offspring at one time.
2. Having carried more than one pregnancy to a viable stage.

1. Having many feet; such as, animals or insects.
2. An insect having many feet; such as, a polyped or a myriapod.

Composed of or performed in several separate phases.

1. Involving or including several things, people, or parts.
2. Existing concurrently in several, or numerous, parts of the body.

Methods of increasing the amount of data that can be transmitted wirelessly within the same frequency spectrum.

Some RFID readers use Time Division Multiple Access, or TDMA, meaning they read tags at different times to avoid interfering with one another.

A well equipped to produce oil or gas separately from more than one reservoir.

Congenital malformations that present slowly growing masses of abnormal tissues in multiple sites.

The tissues are appropriate to the organ in which the hamartomas are located, but they are not normally organized.

They may appear in blood vessels as hemangiomata, and in the lung and kidney. They are not malignant, but they cause symptoms because of the spaces they occupy.

1. A malignant tumor of the bone marrow occurring at numerous places in the body.
2. A cancer that begins in plasma cells.

Plasma cells are white blood cells which make antibodies. Antibodies are part of the immune system. They work with other parts of the immune system to help protect the body from germs and other harmful substances. Each type of plasma cell makes a different antibody.

Myeloma, like other cancers, begins in cells. Normally, cells grow and divide to form new cells as the body needs them.

When cells grow old, they die, and new cells take their place. In cancer, this orderly process goes wrong. New cells form when the body does not need them, and old cells do not die when they should. These extra cells can form a mass of tissue called a growth or tumor.

Myeloma begins when a plasma cell becomes abnormal and that abnormal cell divides to make copies of itself. The new cells divide again and again, making more and more abnormal cells. The abnormal plasma cells are myeloma cells.

In time, myeloma cells collect in the bone marrow where they may crowd out normal blood cells. Myeloma cells also collect in the solid part of the bone.

The disease is called multiple myeloma because it affects many bones. If myeloma cells collect in only one bone, the single mass is called a plasmacytoma or cancer of the plasma cells (white blood cells that produce antibodies).

As myeloma cells increase in number, they damage and weaken the bones, causing pain and often fractures. When bones are damaged, too much calcium is released into the blood, leading to loss of appetite, nausea, thirst, fatigue, muscle weakness, restlessness, and confusion.

Chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant are currently the primary treatments.

A rare dissociative disorder in which an individual develops two or more separate and distinct personalities; each personality is independent of the other(s) and dominant at different times, and the original personality often has no knowledge of the others or any memory of their experiences.