humongousness
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]humongousness (uncountable)
- (informal) The quality of being humongous.
- Synonym: humongosity
- 1982 March 31, Louis Lynch, “Getting burned in the Big Apple”, in The Reporter Dispatch, Putnam edition, White Plains, N.Y.: Gannett Westchester Newspapers, →OCLC, page 10, column 3:
- Crossing the Columbia campus you can’t avoid Amsterdam Avenue, the epitome of the city’s reputation as a melting pot. And almost lost there, despite its humongousness, is the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
- 1984 April, David Quammen, “Rumors of a Snake”, in Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, New York, N.Y.: Laurel, published September 1986, →ISBN, “All God’s Vermin” section, pages 45–46:
- The true genuine size of an anaconda […] is relative to three other factors: (1) whether or not the snake is alive; (2) how close you yourself are to it; and (3) how close both of you are, at that particular moment, to the Amazon heartland. […] And as the other two distances decrease—from you to the snake, from you to the Amazon—the snake varies inversely toward humongousness.
- 1985 September 21, Joe Hanson, “Reach for the moon? This number could reach the stars”, in The News Journal, volume 12, number 42, Wilmington, Del.: The News-Journal Co.; Gannett, →ISSN, →OCLC, page A6, column 1:
- “As I understand this,” said the rabbit, “a prime number is a number that can be divided only by itself and by one. This particular one is two raised to the 216,091st power minus one. Apparently it consists of 65,050 digits and to print it in its glorious humongousness would require you to fill two newspaper pages of about the size of this one.”
- 1988 April 8, Billy Warden, “Big-timin’ Bodeans[sic]”, in Daily Press, 93rd year, number 99, Newport News, Va.: The Daily Press, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page C1, column 1:
- The Bodeans began their own journey to humongousness in Milwaukee, Wis., fictional home of TV’s “Laverne and Shirley.”
- 1989 November, David Michaelis, “In the Noodle”, in Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl (Bantam New Fiction), New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, →ISBN, part 1 (The First Little Boys), pages 55–56:
- At thirteen, at Punkatasset, even with hair of my own, I was staggered by my fellow nudists. With four fully developed sets of bare parts to examine, I was cross-eyed with frustration: […] Just when I most needed a show of competence and general humongousness, would my dick retract like the mandibular head of a shrewd old tortoise?