New dictionary includes 'ginormous'

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LIFESTYLE / Trends

New dictionary includes 'ginormous'

(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-11 09:16

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - It was a ginormous year for the wordsmiths at
Merriam-Webster. Along with embracing the adjective that combines
"gigantic" and "enormous," the dictionary publishers also got into
Bollywood, sudoku and speed dating.

But their interest in India's motion-picture industry, number puzzles and
trendy ways to meet people was all meant for a higher cause: updating the
company's collegiate dictionary, which goes on sale this fall with about
100 newly added words.

As always, the yearly list gives meaning to the latest lingo in pop
culture, technology and current events.

There's "crunk," a style of Southern rap music; the abbreviated "DVR,"
for digital video recorder; and "IED," shorthand for the improvised
explosive devices that have become common in the war in Iraq.

If it sounds as though Merriam-Webster is dropping its buttoned-down
image with too much talk of "smackdowns" (contests in entertainment
wrestling) and "telenovelas" (Latin-American soap operas), consider it
also is adding "gray literature" (hard-to-get written material) and
"microgreen" (a shoot of a standard salad plant.)

No matter how odd some of the words might seem, the dictionary editors
say each has the promise of sticking around in the American vocabulary.

"There will be linguistic conservatives who will turn their nose up at a
word like `ginormous,'" said John Morse, Merriam-Webster's president.
"But it's become a part of our language. It's used by professional
writers in mainstream publications. It clearly has staying power."

One of those naysayers is Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at
MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and the executive secretary of
the American Dialect Society.

"A new word that stands out and is ostentatious is going to sink like a
lead balloon," he said. "It might enjoy a fringe existence."

But Merriam-Webster traces ginormous back to 1948, when it appeared in a
British dictionary of military slang. And in the past several years, its
use has become, well, ginormous.

Visitors to the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's Web site picked
"ginormous" as their favorite word that's not in the dictionary in 2005,
and Merriam-Webster editors have spotted it in countless newspaper and
magazine articles since 2000.

That's essentially the criteria for making it into the collegiate
dictionary — if a word shows up often enough in mainstream writing, the
editors consider defining it.

But as editor Jim Lowe puts it: "Nobody has to use `ginormous' if they
don't want to."

For the record, he doesn't.

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