About the word 'multipede'

I didn't make it up! 'Multipede' goes back at least 260 years:

This wave-like peculiarity of motion [in millipedes] is described in a curious old book, An Essay towards a Natural History of Serpents. Charles Owen, D.D. London, 1742: "The Ambua, so the natives of Brazil call the Millepedes and the Centipedes, are serpents. Those reptiles of thousand legs bend as they crawl along, and are reckoned very poisonous. In these Multipedes the mechanism of the body is very curious: in their going it is observable that on each side of their bodies every leg has its motion, so that their legs, being numerous, form a kind of undulation, and thereby communicate to the body a swifter progression than one could imagine where so many short feet are to take so many short steps, that follow one another rolling on like the waves of the sea." (pp. 40-41)
 
Sinclair, F.G. 1901. Myriapoda. Pp. 27-80 in The Cambridge Natural History. Volume V. Peripatus. Myriapods. Insects. London: Macmillan and Co.; 584 pp.

'Myriapods' means the same thing as 'multipedes', namely 'creatures with many feet'. Many zoologists prefer 'myriapods' to 'multipedes' because 'Myriapoda' has long been a grouping in animal classification, like 'Insecta'. However, 'Myriapoda' is not universally trusted as a natural grouping. While centipedes, millipedes, Pauropoda and Symphyla are each undoubtedly a twig on the tree of life, they may not all be on the same branch. 'Myriapoda', furthermore, doesn't include Onychophora, the velvet worms. For these reasons I prefer to lump the five many-footed groups on this website as 'multipedes'. The word has no standing in animal classification, but it points to the two most familiar myriapod groups, centipedes and millipedes.