humungous (humongous)
adjective

- extremely large; huge

- extraordinarily large; immense

- Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionary, Webster’s College Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

Humongous is a chiefly American expression that surfaced in the 1960s. While there is no official etymology for this expression, we can obtain a few clues by dissecting it:

- hu = huge
- mon = monster, monstrous
- ous = enormous

Thus one explanation is that humongous is simply a BLEND of parts of several other words. In this case, they all have a similar meaning.

BLENDING has been a common word-creation practice in English for many years. Some relatively new blends are:

- emoticon = (emotion, icon)
- infotainment = (information, entertainment)
- permaculture = (permanence, agriculture) - the concept of sustainable farming and gardening
- freegan = (free, vegan) - a person who believes it is wrong to throw away food when millions of people around the world are hungry. For this reason, they only eat food they can get for free and which would usually have been thrown out as waste.

What makes humungous linguistically interesting is its spelling variation. Both "humongous" and "humungous" are widely accepted, though American English tends toward "humongous" while British English prefers "humungous." This dual spelling suggests the word was spoken long before anyone bothered writing it down.

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BEYOND HUGE

A blue whale's heart weighs 400 pounds and is the size of a small car, yet the word "big" feels inadequate to describe it.

Language constantly adjusts to match our experiences. When we see something that astounds us - a skyscraper that seems to reach up to the clouds, a debt that will take decades to repay, a mistake that costs billions - our brains search for a word that matches the emotion. "Large" won't do. Even “enormous” feels insufficient. We need something more.
 Humungous fills the gap between ordinary bigness and the kind of size that makes us stop and stare. The word sounds as excessive as the things it describes.

Humungous is also flexible. Apply it to a physical object and we’re describing actual dimensions. Apply it to an abstract concept like a mistake or a challenge, and we're talking about impact or difficulty. The word stretches to fit whatever needs emphasizing.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

astronomical, big as all outdoors, Brobdingnagian, colossal, elephantine, enormous, epic, fantabulous, gargantuan, giant, gigantic, ginormous, Godzilla-sized, Herculean, huge, HUMONGOUS (US), HUMUNGOUS (UK), hulking, immense, industrial-strength, jumbo, king-size(d), larger than life, mega (-sized), mind-boggling, monumental, monster (-sized), monstrous, mammoth, mountainous, off the charts (the scale,) out of all proportion, out of this world, planetary, prodigious, sky-high, staggering, super-sized, Texas-sized, the size of a whale, thumping, titanic, towering (size), tremendous, vast, voluminous, whopping (great)

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SMUGGLE
 OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"HUMUNGOUS works best when spoken rather than written, where its sound is imitative of HUge, MOnster, and enorMOUS."

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P L E A S E   S U P P O R T   O W A D