The other week, Merriam-Webster announced that its new collegiate dictionary would include 100 new words.
I'm delighted that ginormous made the grade. I've been sold on the word since I heard Will Ferrell's Buddy the Elf say, "Hey! Have you seen these toilets? They're ginormous!" (WAV file here) in the movie, Elf.
Last night over dinner, though, my mom said she doesn't like the word because she hears it with a y ... gynormous. Mr. Tangerine immediately mimed what someone might do when traversing some gynormous female body parts.
Oh! And then Mom recounted a medical record she'd transcribed at work the other day, in which the patient reportedly had one normal labium (yes! labia is the plural of labium) and one labium that can only be described as gynormous. It hung down seven inches. And had something hard inside. That felt like cardboard. Truly gynormous, no? (Sorry, I don't know what sort of diagnosis or body modification technique is involved here.)
Can you use gynormous in a sentence?
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6 comments:
I'd say that my fibroids are gynormous. I know there are larger ones in other uteri, but I'd still describe mine as gynormous. And, of course, there's the obvious use of the word (referred to around me as "large tracts of land," a la Monty Python).
The sonographer referred to my fibroid as gynormous/ginormous once during my pregnancy. I didn't realize it was a new word.
I'm glad the labium link went to a dictionary entry. That could have been so much worse considering...
p.s. I saw "ginormous" in the Territory Ahead catalogue (which competes with the J. Peterman catalogue for preciousness).
I had gynormous cramps last week but a valium and a more gynormous Flirtini did the trick.
Well now what the hell?
/gXn/ let's call it is a morpheme that relates to life....
gene, genetics, gynecology, preGNant, etc., these all clearly (AFAIK) derive from the same morphological root.
To spell ginormous as "gynormous".... oh. Oh, OK , never mind, I see what you're doing. Linguistics sprung to action inadvertently.
Major props -- and all I have to say is that if you get a McDonalds Quarter Pounder With Cheese after delivering a 12-pound baby, that, and maybe only that, is a gynormous event.
Honestly. I'm feeling dilated with pleasure from this thread. Ginormously.
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