Grimer Girl here. I'm Minion Fogarty and this week I have a quick and dirty tip about

the difference between enormity and enormismus. In a tidbit about the game Badminton and where

it gets its name. Let's start with a quick and dirty tip. Traditionally, usage guides

said that enormismus described something huge and enormity described something overwhelmingly

horrible. Yet today, enormity is also regularly used to describe something of staggering

hugeness. Some people call this an error and some people call it language change.

The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English usage says there's no basis for the distinction

between the words. And they also note that the word enormismus has always been less popular

than enormity. Nobody makes the quote mistake of using enormismus to describe something monstrously

horrible. They only use enormity to describe something huge. People just seem to prefer the word

enormity. But to me, the real problem is that the muddled meanings can cause ambiguity. Consider

this sentence. The enormity of the landslide daunted the cleanup crew. Was the problem huge or

horrible? Who knows, you can't tell from that sentence. The quick and dirty tip is to avoid

ambiguity by avoiding the word enormity. Incentences where the meaning could be either huge or horrible.

Instead of saying the enormity of the landslide daunted the cleanup crew, be more specific and say

something like the devastation caused by the landslide daunted the cleanup crew. Or the sheer size

of the landslide daunted the cleanup crew. That way your meaning will be clear.

And now on to Badminton. This week's radio lab podcast was about a strange Olympic

Badminton match in which both teams were trying to lose instead of trying to win. It was a great

story, but at the beginning, Mike Peska made a big deal about how the game is called Badminton

with an N. Not Badminton, as many people say, as though you're scolding a cat. Bad, Badminton.

I'm certainly one of those people who's been saying it wrong my whole life, so I was really happy

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