What's another word for big?
How about one for big big? Like, really, really big? Like skyscrapers, ocean liners, and Kaiju big? Huge. Giant. Jumbo. Colossal. Vast? Elephantine. Oooh, how about...brobdingnagian1?
English has amassed, over the centuries, a broad collection of words that mean, simply, really big. Some of them stem from myths and legends - titanic, for example, derives from the word titan, a race of giants who ran the world before Zeus and Co. showed up - while others come from simply describing things that were big, like mammoths or the cosmos.
The trouble is, over the centuries, many of these words have become so removed from their source that they no longer have any nuance or subtlety to them and thus have become that rare and dreaded thing, absolute synonyms. I'm thinking in particular about two of the biggest big words, gigantic and enormous.
As we discussed a couple of issues ago, absolute synonyms are when two words can be substituted for each other with no loss or change in meaning. At the time, we noted that absolute synonyms are rare, and often very contextually limited. Think of gigantic and enormous as the exception that proves the rule. There are very few situations in which these two words cannot replace each other.
In other words, this is one of the even rarer cases where, when a student asks, “what’s the difference between word A and word B,” the answer is “not much.” Perhaps a more relevant question would be, “have they always had the same meaning?” And the answer there is, “kinda.”
Merriam-Webster lists the pair as having the same meaning - "exceedingly large" before noting that they do, sometimes, have some nuances:
...Enormous often adds an implication of abnormality or monstrousness.
and
Gigantic stresses the contrast with the size of others of the same kind.
Now, as far as enormous goes, this attachment to monstrous goes back all the way to the beginning. From Etymonline:
1530s, "abnormal" (usually in a bad sense), from Latin enormis "out of rule, irregular, shapeless; extraordinary, very large,"
Just a short decade later enormous was being used to simply mean really big.
Gigantic, meanwhile, entered the language almost a century later but retained its "pertaining to giants" usage as its main nuance until the late 1700s when it had come to mean, big big2.
So, have they always meant the same thing? Yes, but they used to have other associations that have faded over time. To put it another way, these words did not grow to become synonyms, rather, the usages that made them less than absolute synonyms slowly fell away leaving only the core usage.
In fact, the two words have become so synonymous, so interchangeable that they've become a portmanteau. From Etymonline again:
ginormous (adj.)
by 1948, perhaps 1942, apparently originally a World War II military colloquialism, from a merger of gigantic + enormous.
Now, the key phrase there is colloquialism, another word for slang. Because ginormous is not a one-off. Within the same context, we have humongous, a portmanteau of huge and monstrous3. But if we jump idioms for a moment, how about fantabulous, a blend of fantastic and fabulous. Doesn't that suggest that, within a given context, fantastic and fabulous have become absolute synonyms? I think so.
And that's my thesis this week - that the true test4 of whether two words are absolute synonyms is whether they can be blended into a new portmanteau. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that just because two words have become a portmanteau that they are synonyms. If anything, I'm trying to suggest that it's because words like chillax (chill + relax) work so well that more humorous blends like frenemy (friend + enemy) work. After all, if we weren't able to intuitively understand that two words having the same meaning could be combined, Voltron-like, into something more interesting than its component parts, then it wouldn't be funny when we used two words that most definitely do not mean the same thing. Looking at you, Brangelina.
So, here's an assignment for the week - look at your own vernacular, look at the in-jokes you have with your friends and co-workers. Are there synonymous portmanteaus5 there? Are there words like chillax, fantabulous, and ginormous? If not, should there be? Try out a new one or three. See how people react. Could be comusing6!
The Pitch
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What We're Reading
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers
by Tom Standage
There's a line that runs through the entire history of the last 200 years and it's a telecommunications cable. From the telegraph to the telephone to the internet, the past two centuries have seen a remarkable change in how we are able to communicate with each other. In this book, author Standage traces that line with a keen eye, discussing the people who formed each of the major stops along the way. It's a fascinating look at just how far back the beginning of the revolution was.
Merriam-Webster: “marked by tremendous size.”
Two words I wouldn't personally have classified as synonyms, but that my thesaurus does.
I mean, it’s not the only test, but it’s definitely the most fun test.
If anyone’s got a proper, academic term for this phenomenon, let me know. I didn’t have as much time to research as I usually do and I came up with nothing. But it is something I’d like to study further.
Comical + amusing. No? Fine.