ginormous

ginormous

English

Etymology

Blend of gigantic +‎ enormous, originally 1940s military slang.[1]

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dʒaɪˈnɔːməs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)məs

Adjective

ginormous (comparative more ginormous, superlative most ginormous)

1. (informal) Very large.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:large

   • 1986, Ron Friedman, The Transformers: The Movie, spoken by Jazz:

     This is Jazz, a ginormous weird looking planet just showed up in the suburbs of Cybertron.

   • 1999, Gabrielle Charbonnet, Adventure at Walt Disney World: A Disney Girls Super Special, Disney Press, →ISBN, page 20:

     Walt Disney World is ginormous. Even after you’re on the property, you have to drive about fifteen minutes to get to different places.

   • 2019, Green Bank Observatory, Most massive neutron star ever detected, almost too massive to exist:

     “Neutron stars are as mysterious as they are fascinating. These city-sized objects are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei.”

Derived terms

• ginormously
• ginormousness

Translations

very large

French: gigantesque (fr), méga (fr) German: gigantisch (de), riesig (de), elefantös (de) (colloquial, humorous) Italian: enorme (it) Portuguese: ginorme Spanish: descomunal (es)

See also

• hunormous

References

1. Adam Gorlick (2007-07-10), “New Dictionary Includes 'Ginormous'”, in Washington Post‎, archived from the original on 2011-08-14: “Merriam-Webster traces ginormous back to 1948, when it appeared in a British dictionary of military slang.”

Further reading

• “ginormous”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
• “ginormous”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.