A ginormous mistake

A friend of mine at work today said that people who write blogs are the same kind of people who write letters to the editor. Guilty on both fronts. Earlier this year, I wrote a letter to the New York Times Magazine’s columnist on language (and former Nixon speechwriter), William Safire, imploring him to look into the use of the word “ginormous” in a colleague’s article about Arcade Fire. The sentence read: “...all of them crowding together...grabbing for empty plates so that Liza can dole out steaming ladles of pasta from her ginormous pot.” Large? Huge? Enormous, even? And, as a fitting coda, today Merriam-Webster announced that “ginormous” is one of about 100 words that will be added to their dictionary in the fall. Other new words include “crunk,” “smackdown” and “snowboardcross.”