several: [15] Etymologically, several means ‘separate’. It comes via Anglo-Norman several from medieval Latin sēparālis, a derivative of Latin sēpar ‘separate’. This in turn was formed from sēparāre ‘separate’ (source of English separate), whose Vulgar Latin descendant *sēperāre passed into English via Anglo- Norman severer as sever [14]. Several’s original sense ‘separate, individual’ survives in legal terminology, but it has been superseded in the general language by ‘many’, which emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries via ‘different, various’. => prepare, separate, sever
