Not P but DFW on lexicography

[Mike Jing]

>From "Authority and American Usage":

. . . and these controversies take a certain amount of time to unpack
before their relation to what makes Garner’s dictionary so eminently worth
your hard-earned reference-book dollar can even be established; and in fact
there’s no way even to begin the whole harrowing polymeric discussion
without first taking a moment to establish and define the highly colloquial
term SNOOT.

What does "polymeric" mean here?