Myriad Questions or a Myriad of Questions

How do you use the word “myriad”? As a noun or an adjective? The snobby grammarian purists (and poets) insist on using it as an adjective; as in: They ask myriad questions. or Myriad participants attended the conference.

Then there are the pure grammarians — my kind of anarchy grammarians who use language to suit them. They readily accept: They ask a myriad of questions. or A myriad of participants attended the conference.

What’s right? you ask, forgetting that we anarchists do not recognize the words right and wrong. Here’s another opportunity to make your choice the prime factor. Which do you like best?  Until the 1800s, myriad was used in English as a noun. Then along came a poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Now you can blame the confusion on Coleridge and his “Hymn to the Earth,” in which he included the lines:

O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention:
Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!
Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith
Myriad myriads of lives teem’d forth from the mighty embracement.

 So now it’s up to you. Both uses are acceptable. But you wouldn’t stoop to playing the snooty card… would you? Or do thou strovest to flee?