RT Journal
A1 Pease RW, Jr
T1 EVolution of language
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 1979
FD August 3
VO 242
IS 5
SP 413
OP 413
DO 10.1001/jama.1979.03300050011003
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1979.03300050011003
AB To the Editor.— 
    The editorial by Samuel Vaisrub, MD (241:830, 1979), concerning the word "multifactorial" overlooked two dictionaries in which the term is defined. The following definition appears in a Merriam-Webster publication1:mul•ti•fac•to•ri•al*-fak′tōrē[unk]l, -′tȯr- ormul•ti•fac•tor -¦fakt[unk](r) adj: having or involving a variety of elements <a multifactorial study>Entries in Merriam-Webster dictionaries are based on citational evidence. At present, the citation files contain more than 12 1/2 million examples of English word usage recorded on 3×5-in slips. The earliest record of the new sense of multifactorial in the files is dated 1965 from Dubois2: "The concept of multifactorial causation is in reality but an extension of the doctrine of specificity that brings scientific understanding a little nearer to the complexities of the real world."The word is also defined in a recent supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary1 under sense 1 of the combining form multi-, where