Once a week, I ask my first-year law students a language puzzle, often focused on legalese but sometimes on broader English usage matters that can arise in legal work. Yesterday's puzzle involved the distinctions between permissive and permissible, between conclusory and conclusive, and between enormity and enormousness. I noticed that none of the student volunteers could answer the enormity question — and when I discussed it later with some other very smart and well-educated people, I saw that they were unaware of the (possible) distinction. I therefore thought it was worth blogging, for the benefit of our similarly very smart and well-educated readers.
Here's the distinction: While enormousness generally means "very great or abnormal size, bulk, degree, etc.; immensity; hugeness," enormity is often used to mean "outrageous or heinous character; atrociousness" and "something outrageous or heinous, as an offense." Therefore (a) "enormity" makes some listeners think of something bad, and (b) some people believe that the use of "enormity" to mean "enormousness" is an error.
As it happens — and I stressed this to my students — "enormity" has long been used to mean "enormousness." The OED attests this back to 1792, and Random House reports that "Enormity has been in frequent and continuous use in the sense "immensity" since the 18th century." I therefore wouldn't say that the use is thus "incorrect" in any objective sense.
Nonetheless, both the OED and the Random House report that the use is regarded as incorrect by at least a considerable number of people; my law students, I think, ought to know this, so that they don't inadvertently alienate those readers. (If they knowingly alienate them, because they refuse to be bullied by the Language Police, that's a different matter.) Moreover, even readers who aren't so picky but who associate "enormity" with something bad might be distracted by the term: If you say "The enormity of his generosity impressed me," you'll at least be distracting readers, even if they understand what you mean and don't deliberately hold your word choice against you. If you write about "the enormity of the task," you might lead readers to wonder -- even if only briefly -- which meaning you have in mind. So I would caution people to avoid using "enormity" to simply mean "large size," though as I said I don't think I can objectively call this a language error.
UPDATE: I should have mentioned two other things. First, I'd probably caution people away from using "enormity" even in the sense of "atrociousness," unless the context is such that even those who read "enormity" as being "immensity" will get your message. "Enormity of his sins" might be fine; "enormity of the task" probably will be confusing. It may be too bad that many intelligent, well-educated readers don't know the word, but that seems to be the reality.
Second, "enormousness" strikes me as pretty clunky; I'd suggest "vastness" or "immensity" or some such instead. I'm not recommending its use -- I'm just cautioning against using "enormity" as a rough synonym for those three words.
I am looking for scholarly articles on the common English idiom, especially in the 18th century, of using the same word for an activity and those engaged in it. Some examples include:
service
assembly
movement
wedding
viking
congregation
aggregation
delegation
march
ministry
court
militia
hunt
police
hospital
university
Indeed, it appears that in the 18th century almost any word for an activity was commonly also used to refer to those engaged in it. It seems that this should have been thoroughly investigated, but would like cites to such studies.
I'm not sure that I would ever use "enormousness." It doesn't add anything to "hugeness," except syllables.
If one uses enormousness, there is no risk of being misunderstood. If one uses enormity, there is considerable risk of being misunderstood.
I think that's right. Those are the sorts of issues on which I am willing to hold the line in my classes. The word "nonplussed" is a good example. I know that it is commenly used now to mean "unaffected." But that usage makes a simple declarative sentence like "He was nonplussed by the offer" incomprehensible, except through further inquiry.
Same with "bemused," which has morphed to mean "amused." "That information bemused me."--What does this sentence mean these days? Best just to say "bewildered."
I'm pretty confident that I've got the "-ity" function right (cf. the logical/lexical function of "-itas" in Latin, "-ia" in Greek), but I'm less sure about "-ness." Any pro linguists in the audience?
A similar development gave us "utilize" as a back-formation from "utility," which folks did not realize is the noun form of the verb "to use." Further deplorable developments gave us "utilization" instead of "use" and even "utilizationage" gah cough ugh.
I would never use "enormousness," by the way, since it sounds so much like a popular back formation, like "utilize." Makes you sound like a robot. Off hand, I can't think of any well-written sentence in which the word "enormousness" could not be replaced without loss of meaning by "size."
We have enough problem these days what with spell checkers approving and schools apparently failing to teach the differnces between such words as "rain" and reign" and "rein".
I cannot think of a single good reason to use such an awkward construction as "enormousness" which appears to exist as proper usage only because the normal noun formation "enormity" is saddled with that negative or evil connotation. thanks r
In the phrase "enormity of his evil" the negative connotation comes from the word "evil". The word "enormity" just represents size. Besides, does it make sense to say "evil" is "enormous in a bad way"?
Oh, you mean like:
"Only one misspelling permissive is permissible."
This is one of those times when it's nice to look up the etymology of the word. Both "enormous" and "enormity" derive from Latin roots meaning "away from the norm". In the case of "enormous", the word is taken to refer only to size. "Enormity" has tended to refer to moral acceptability, though it is also used to refer to size. In theory, I suppose, "enormity" could refer to some of the odd hair colors I see on Hollywood Boulevard.
- "The Stand," Lingua Franca, September/October 1996
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/enormity.html
Geoff Nunberg
If my suspicion is correct, you could make a case that the latter use was originally based on a misunderstanding of the writers' intent (i.e. substituting "unusally large" for "unnaturally large"). That would, of course, not imply that it is currently incorrect, but would strengthen the case for avoiding it.
The words "enormous", "monstrous" and "prodigious" all originally had the sense of unnaturalness with only a secondary implication of large magnitude. They have all lost that sense to varying degrees, which is a pity.
I have clearly been wrong in my prior understanding of the word, according to the OED et al., however since the original post considers not only the dictionary definitions but the received meanings, I think it is worth commenting that throughout my life I have understood enormity to mean (only) a sense of the largeness of scale of something. When I was reading the second sentence of Eugene's post, and before reading the remainder, I contemplated for myself the distinction twixt enormity and enormousness and I too, as apparently erp, decided that enormity was more of an abstract concept whereas enormousness referred to a tangible thing. e.g. the enormity of the problem versus the enormousness of Sid's carbuncle. I had previously been unaware of any negative sense of the word (outrageous/heinous/atrocious) except to the extent that it could suggest a thing so huge as to be untenable, unwise or at least rather risky. All of which, I suppose, serves but to amplify Mr Volokh's point of avoiding the word.
-- Madame Konstantin, to Claude Rains, in Notorious
(I always thought enormity referred to the size of abstractions, while enormousness referred to the size of concrete things. At least, in those rare moments when I thought about the difference in usage between the two.)
I keep thinking of "enormity of the project" in reference to the construction of a skyscraper and marvelling at how appropriate the usage is there and how there's no way to tell whether the enormity is good, bad, or indifferent.
But I'd work on conjugating "lie" and "lay" first. "Lay" is misused thousands of times for every misuse of "enormity."
Except that above I noted that I'm familiar only with its negative connotation, and IANAL. Perhaps this is a sign that I spend too much time on VC?
I would not use "enormity" to refer to construction of a skyscraper; but I like skyscrapers. Which doesn't make its usage incorrect in your example. Just sounds odd to me.
This is why I find these posts by our Maximo Jefe so interesting.
I hope Language Log does a piece on this soon.