“Ginormous” Is Totally a Word

Scrabble enthusiasts take note: Ginormous & crunk are both legitimate dictionary entries.

I wonder if they added them together, in a concerted effort to legitimize ginormous crunk. Let’s name a band Ginormous Crunk.

Visitors to the 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.

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That’s essentially the criterion 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.

Moments ago I was reading in Gizmodo that “DVR” is now as word as well.

It was nicely counterpointed by them calling Meridian Webster the USA Today of dictionaries.