Ginormous 07.11.2007

We live in a wonderful, wonderful world when the word ginormous is officially part of the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

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.

Other words included Bollywood and sudoku, but who really cares?

Ginormous is now a real word!