Now That <i> Humongous </i> Is Among Us
I’ve mentioned that my wife is a social worker. She’s also a marriage and family counselor, and, as such, she has a broader view of the world than I have.
In her private practice, she has dealings with adolescents. I don’t. Our grandchildren are all pre-adolescent. So I, at least, am out of immediate touch with today’s teens. I see them, of course, and I overhear them on occasion, but I’m not really privy to their conversations.
Some time ago, apropos of her contact with teen-agers, Jeannie asked me if I had any idea what the derivation of humongous might be. I’ve been asked that by several people over the last few years, so I might as well hazard a guess or two. Humongous, for those who have been on another planet recently, is youthful slang, and it means, approximately, “enormous, great.”
It is, to my mind, one of the most paradoxical of words. For several years, I’ve been aware of its existence, and I’ve had several conversations regarding it. But I have yet to hear it used casually, in its contextual sense. My circle of friends is too advanced in years, I’m afraid. Perhaps, too, my younger friends tend to adjust their talk, while in my company, to “the old guy who writes about language, so watch what you say.”
I suppose someone somewhere knows exactly who first said, “Geez, my head feels humongous this morning!” or whatever it was that occasioned the coinage, but I am reasonably certain that none of us will ever get a positive identification on who it was or how it was put.
Humongous is not what is sometimes called a “learned construction,” or a term made up by scholars versed in the “learned borrowings” from Latin and Greek. My favorite example of a learned construction is sesquipedalian. Sesqui is a borrowing from Latin meaning “one-and-a-half” as in sesquicentennial (150 years), and pedal, of course, is “of the foot.”
Sesquipedalian was created by a scholar with a nice sense of humor. It means “given to using long words”--words a foot-and-a-half long, in fact. I understand that that’s the sort of thing that used to transform sedate Oxford dons into ho-ho-ing knee-slappers.
I feel sure that humongous had a more earthy origin--similar to the one I postulated above, with implications of wooziness from a hangover. It’s a remarkably good word, having consonance with huge, tremendous, monster and perhaps a few related adjectives. It also rings of human and among us, which brings it into a personal realm.
I’d make what I think is a reasonable guess that humongous is not often used to describe, say, China, or the Pacific Ocean--”a humongous country” or “a humongous body of water.” But if an American teen-ager returned from a visit to China, he might describe a temple as humongous. And surely many a surfer on the Pacific coast has thrilled to humongous waves.
Humongous, I think, must have sprung full-blown from the mind of some youngster who perhaps was trying to think of another word, but who came out with this one and liked it and used it again. He or she might well have been in that twilight zone of half-sleep during which phantom words and thoughts drift through our heads, mingling and parting, when humongous settled in for a long rest.
I had an experience years ago, when my drowsing mind cuddled up with the word thraight, which at the time seemed like an old friend, familiar and comfortable, and which meant “straight through.” I woke up later with thraight fresh in my thoughts, and after examining it, I realized that it was not only not an old friend, but was an ugly, stupid hunk of cerebral lint.
Humongous, on the other hand, is quite a nice addition to the language. It may be lacking in background and breeding, but it has a homespun naturalness that commends it. The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, lists it, noting that it can also be spelled humungous. It’s an easygoing sort of word that couldn’t care less how you spell it. Maybe some day I’ll use it instead of just talking behind its back.
