Words at Play : 10 Words That Are Older Than You Might Think
Earliest Known Usage:
1942
Example:
"Hey! Have you seen these toilets? They're ginormous!" – spoken by Will Ferrell (as Buddy), Elf, 2003 film
About the Word:
Ginormous, a humorous blend of gigantic and enormous, owes much of its recent popularity to its appearance in the 2003 movie Elf, where it is enthusiastically uttered by actor Will Ferrell. However, when Merriam-Webster added it to the Collegiate Dictionary in 2007, editors made note of the fact that it could then be found at least as far back as 1948, when it was recorded in a dictionary of military slang. Recent research has found the word used in British newspapers as early as 1942
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