Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Ginormous news? Hardly.
The AP reports Merriam-Webster is adding ginormous to the dictionary (incidentally, the Blogger software considers ginormous misspelled).
What's peculiar is the inclusion of ginormous should not be news-worthy--it's been in the OED forever where it is marked as slang. That makes sense; I think of my own usage of the word and up until today it's something I think I've only used in informal conversation, generally jokingly, and never in written communication.
Apparently, inclusion in the M-W dictionary means ginormous has grown beyond the boundaries of slang-dom, but I don't buy it; can you imagine if the President used ginormous in a State of the Union speech? He'd look awfully foolish.
What's peculiar is the inclusion of ginormous should not be news-worthy--it's been in the OED forever where it is marked as slang. That makes sense; I think of my own usage of the word and up until today it's something I think I've only used in informal conversation, generally jokingly, and never in written communication.
Apparently, inclusion in the M-W dictionary means ginormous has grown beyond the boundaries of slang-dom, but I don't buy it; can you imagine if the President used ginormous in a State of the Union speech? He'd look awfully foolish.