monstrous

Wed Apr 20 06:29:36 UTC 2011

"Monstrous" is the Word of the Day in today's OED mailing. While most
lemmas are dated back to the 14th or 15th century, it is the other end
that grabbed my attention--a couple of expressions that are labeled
obsolete, archaic or rare. In particular, I looked at two, both
intensifiers, but one adjective and one adverb (see definitions and
quotes below, following the signature).

This is a bit hard because it's not always clear if "monstrous" is
merely an intensifier or actually has something to do with monsters (or
horror). But, to me, it seems much more common than the OED descriptions
let on. Instead of looking for individual instances, which would be
nearly impossible with all the extraneous noise, I picked up likely
words that might be modified (intensified) by "monstrous", such as
hunger, crowd, deal, sale, etc., for nouns ("monstrous" adj.) and good,
bad, huge, large, rare, loud, for adjectives ("monstrous" adv.).

I restricted the search to GB only with dates /after/ Jan 1, 1990. This
still includes a number of reprints of Mark Twain and Frank Baum
(monstrous big), Emil Zola (monstrous din), Beaumont & Fletcher and
Thomas Carlyle (monstrous loud), Jane Austen (monstrous deal), plus a
handful of other older material, but most are new publications. The
initial results included thousands of raw hits for each combination--in
fact, all numbered in the thousands, over 10000, in fact, for all but
"hunger" and "thirst". This seems odd--the expressions are not /that/
pervasive.

It appears that sometime since the beginning of the year, Google changed
the search algorithm so that searching for "A B" and A-B no longer gives
the same results. In fact, only searching for "A-B" gives actual
occurrences of the combination A B (with or without a hyphen). The other
two include a large number of A and B occurring in proximity to each
other, but not exact combination.

Accepting this, I reduced the number of hits for all of these down to
between 10 and 400 raw, depending on the modified word. This also
significantly increased the proportion of old-text reprints among the
results, but not so much as to make new publications "rare". Certainly,
the expressions don't appear obsolete or archaic.

I am not certain about "crowd" as it likely falls under A. 5.a.:

> 5. a. Of unnaturally or extraordinarily large dimensions; gigantic,
> immense, enormous.

Some of the others may also fall under 5.a., e.g., "monstrous big
football players", although here it's both an intensifier /and/ an
indication of dimensions--someone else would have to separate them.
There is the additional problem in that I am not sure whether
"monstrous" here is modifying "big" or "football players" along with
"big" (i.e., adverb vs. adjective--the latter is 5.a., but the former is
not).

"Monstrous bad" may also fall under some of the other definitions,
depending on the noun that follows--for example, if the next word is
"lie" than it goes under 4.b.--along with "monstrous bastard" and
"monstrous evil", which is why I did not include them in the search (not
sure about "evil"--see "big" just above).

> 4. b. Outrageously wrong or absurd. Used esp. in expressing
> indignation, consternation, or contempt.

But other combinations don't suffer from these detractors.

I am sure, looking through general web search result will produce many
more instances (although, again, there would be a need to filter out
quotations from old texts). For example, "monstrous good time" is a
stock phrase among theater critics, so it regularly shows up in reviews
(and ads quoting reviews--7 hits since 2004). "Monstrous sale" gets only
one current hit in Google News, but "monstrous deal" gets 46 (since
1991--oddly enough, most describing trades for NHL players or in other
sports; "trade" adds another 21 hits, but half are for "monstrous trade
deficit", which is a "monstrous quality"). The problem does not appear
to be in finding real examples so much as separating them from noise.
Another popular one is "monstrous break". Whatever the case, none of the
"arch.", "obs.", "rare" or "regional" appear to apply (is ESPN
"regional"? NYPost? LATimes? what about newspapers in Salt Lake City,
Toronto and Pittsburgh showing the same expressions on different dates?)

VS-)

Here are the two definitions:

> A. 6. Used as a colloquial intensifier: very great, excessive,
> ‘tremendous’. Now rare (U.S. regional). Cf. sense A. 5.
> 1711 Swift Jrnl. to Stella 7 Feb. (1948) I. 182We have a monstrous
> deal of snow.
> 1717 Lady M. W. Montagu Let. 29 May (1965) I. 361The Greeks have most
> monstrous taste in their pictures, which for more finery are allways
> drawn upon a gold Ground.
> 1782 F. Burney Cecilia I. i. iii. 39After all this monstrous fatigue,
> I was forced to have my hair dressed by my own maid.
> 1782 J. Wolcot in J. J. Rogers Opie & his Wks. (1878) 22West the
> famous painter, a monstrous favourite of George's.
> 1825 W. Cobbett Rural Rides in Weekly Reg. 26 Nov. 548Here is a
> monstrous deal of vanity and egotism.
> 1858 in Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. (1983) lxx. 42It took her a monstrous
> while to get it.
> 1929 Amer. Speech 5 127A person might be ‘a great hand to make a poor
> mouth’ (an expression of discouragement) or a ‘monstrous worker’.
>
> B. adv.
> Used as an intensifier: exceedingly, excessively, very. Now arch. or
> regional. Cf. mighty adv.
> 1569 E. Fenton tr. P. Boaistuau Certaine Secrete Wonders Nature f.
> 82,He became so monstrous huge and fat, that he durst not shewe
> himself to the people, for feare of contempt.
> 1600 Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream i. ii. 47Ile speake in a
> monstrous little voice.
> 1655 in E. Nicholas Nicholas Papers (1892) II. 262,I cannot but feare
> he may doe this monstrous vnhappy act.
> 1710 Swift Jrnl. to Stella 6 Dec. (1948) I. 114It is such monstrous
> rainy weather, that there is no doing with it.
> 1782 F. Burney Cecilia I. i. v. 73She's a monstrous shocking dresser.
> 1826 B. Disraeli Vivian Grey I. ii. xiv. 191The most monstrous clever
> young man.
> 1840 F. Trollope Widow Married I. xii. 313,I think we shall be
> monstrous good friends.
> 1884 ‘M. Twain’ Adventures Huckleberry Finn xvi. 122Behind a monstrous
> long raft.
> 1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. 386A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh!
> 1972 P. O'Brian Post Captain iv. 80He mentioned some monstrous rare
> pippit or titmouse that lives here.
> 1993 E. Bloom & L. Bloom Piozzi Lett. 401A Colewart so monstrous huge
> that five hundred men on horseback might stand in her shade.

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