Other forms: legions
A legion is a large body of soldiers, or a great number of anything. A Roman legion, the Foreign Legion, their problems are legion.
A Roman legion was about five thousand men and was the basic unit of the army for centuries. The French Foreign Legion still carries the name. As an adjective after a verb, legion means very numerous: the examples are legion — which is a formal construction worth recognising. Note the Royal British Legion, the veterans' charity; and that legion in that use is always plural in sense and singular in form.
1nounlegionA large body of soldiers.
“A legion was about five thousand men at full strength.”
2adjectivenumerousVery numerous.
“Her fans are legion, and they queue for hours to see her.”
legion is a large body or number.
LEG-ion → LEG-end
The legend cut into the stone says five thousand men marched into the fog on that road, and that not one of them came back out of it.
hooks ontolegend
Latin legio comes from legere, to gather or choose — the same verb as in select and collect. A legion was a levy of chosen men, so the word names the recruiting rather than the fighting.
Proto-Indo-European
*leǵ-
Latin
legiō
Old French
legion
English, today
legion
Built from
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. a 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".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA