Ginormous is among the nearly 100 new words and senses of existing words that will be included in the 2007 edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary this fall. It’s a portmanteau word, snapping-together giant and enormous to mean “extremely large.” Why either of those two words can’t suffice for this new Kindergarten construction is unclear to me.
In terms of new words for size, I will rejoice only when embiggen makes the cut for the dictionary. It’s on its way. Scientific American noted late last month that embiggen, a word that debuted in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons, appeared in a paper by Stanford University physicist Shamit Kachru, “the most prominent younger researchers working on string theory.” Kachru suggests he included the word, which he defines as “to enlarge or expand in size,” because The Simpsons is “a source of knowledge for all serious theoretical physicists.”
Go fake word, go!