Ginormous!

I was pleased to see that one of my favorite English adjectives, 'ginormous', has made it into Merriam-Webster's new collegiate dictionary, along with words such as 'crunk' and 'smackdown'.

"There will be linguistic conservatives who will turn their nose up at a word like `ginormous,'" said John Morse, Merriam-Webster's president.

Not I!

"But it's become a part of our language. It's used by professional writers in mainstream publications. It clearly has staying power."

One of those naysayers is Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society.

"A new word that stands out and is ostentatious is going to sink like a lead balloon," he said. "It might enjoy a fringe existence."

I don't know. From my observation, it seems to be becoming more common. Besides, neologisms are fun. Just ask Aeschylus.

But I didn't realize that the word had actually been around for a little while:

But Merriam-Webster traces ginormous back to 1948, when it appeared in a British dictionary of military slang. And in the past several years, its use has become, well, ginormous.

It was, moreover, urged on the dictionary by popular opinion, which is, it seems, how new coinages pass into popular speech.

Visitors to the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's Web site picked "ginormous" as their favorite word that's not in the dictionary in 2005, and Merriam-Webster editors have spotted it in countless newspaper and magazine articles since 2000.

That's essentially the criteria for making it into the collegiate dictionary — if a word shows up often enough in mainstream writing, the editors consider defining it.

But the fastidious can still avoid it if they want:

But as editor Jim Lowe puts it: "Nobody has to use `ginormous' if they don't want to."

For the record, he doesn't.

But I do!

ProfessoCop?

I came home today, made myself a nice bowl of soup, and caught the end of some documentary on Roman engineering when lo and behold I see Peter Weller.

When I see Peter Weller I can only think of RoboCop, and to Peter I apologize for that. It's just that I was an impressionable kid when he made that movie. I had no idea that Peter teaches at Syracuse and is pursuing a PhD:

Weller, 58, who holds a master's degree in Roman and Renaissance art and is working toward a Ph.D., has become one of Syracuse University's most popular professors.

"My fascination with ancient Rome started as a kid back in Texas when my father turned me on to Robert Graves, who wrote 'I, Claudius,'" says Weller, speaking from the South African set of the adventure movie "Prey." "I was always reading about the great emperors of Rome and then I started collecting first-century coins."

And he even has a good sense of humor:

Last year, Weller taught a course called "Hollywood and the Roman Empire."

"It's a classics course posing as a film course," he says. "Eighty kids signed up thinking they'd get an easy A from RoboCop. When they saw the reader was 450 pages, including Homer and Suetonius, a quarter of the class dropped out."

That was written in September of 2005. Does anyone have an update on Master Weller?

UPDATE (27 Jan 2007): David Meadows (courtesy of Laura Gibbs) reports that Wired has a brief article on the subject.

Is nothing sacred?

A reader has e-mailed to ask about the correct Latin translation of the phrase 'is nothing sacred?', made famous in Wes Anderson's classic Rushmore as 'nihilo sanctum estne?'

The problem with that translation was discussed here previously, but I thought I'd post my reply to this latest question, which may be inadequate so feel free to add your two cents on the issue in the comments.

It's almost a philosophical question. You have to think about the meaning behind the idiom rather than the literal translation.

Nihilo sanctum estne is close to a literal translation, but it's grammatically incorrect. A literal translation might be "nihilne sanctum est?" The interrogative particle (-ne) attaches to the first word (which is why "estne" would be a question unto itself in the Rushmore version). The verb "est" isn't technically necessary, so: nihilne sanctum?

This could work, but it's not said anywhere in Latin literature, though similar statements exist, e.g., "dictitat ... nihil esse tam sanctum quod non violari ... possit," i.e., "he asserts that ... nothing is so sacred that it can not be violated" (Cicero, In Verrem I. 2). This same thought is expressed elsewhere in nearly identical terms.

So it's possible to use "nihil sanctum (est)" to say "nothing's sacred." But still, the question "is nothing sacred" isn't asked.

It can be difficult to pinpoint the essential meaning of an idiom and then to translate it into the idiom of another language in a way that would be culturally relevant. In the same context that an English speaker says "is nothing sacred?", a Roman might have said, "mehercule!", an exclamation like our "my god!" which originally meant "by Hercules!" It expresses disbelief, maybe even disgust. But then again, there are probably better Latin idioms that I can't think of that would suit in different contexts.

Not funny, but relevant.

Not funny, but relevant. 

Bad Movie Latin!

I just watched the Punisher with my dad on his sweet new widescreen hi-def TV, and noticed an odd bit of Latin.

The main character talks about his military training and says he was told repeatedly sic vis pacem para bellum: 'if you want peace, prepare for war.'

Of course it should be si and not sic.

That's not so bad as far as films go. It's certainly not as bad as Rushmore's nihilo sanctum estne? which is supposed to mean 'is nothing sacred?,' but which can only mean 'in nothing there is something sacred. Isn't there?'

If I recall the Latin in Tombstone wasn't bad, even if they were only quoting proverbs to one other.

it's merMAN!!!

well, i didn't think i'd soon see the day where i would stumble across such an obvious connection between the roman 'neoteric' poets and the critically-acclaimed, ground-breaking film zoolander. but i just did, in t.p. wiseman's book Cinna the Poet. i quote (p.55):

Calvus' "Io" was about the girl whom amorous Jupiter made into a heifer, while the subject of Cornificius' "Glaucus" was presumably the fisherman turned merman whose inamorata Scylla was changed by Circe into a sea-monster.

the crucial word to note here is 'merman', which also appears in zoolander in the pivotal bar-scene involving derek and his estranged father. i did not know that this word had an existence outside of the movie.

but boy am i glad it does.