Sentence:  The late R. G. Collingwood , a philosopher whose work has proved helpful to <WSD>many</WSD> students of literature , once wrote `` We are all , though many of us are snobbish enough to wish to deny it , in far closer sympathy with the art of the music-hall and picture-palace than with Chaucer and Cimabue , or even Shakespeare and Titian . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a quantifier that can be used with count nouns and is often preceded by `as' or `too' or `so' or `that'; amounting to a large but indefinite number