More words that are easy to confuse.

Enormity/ enormousness

Sometimes in English two words can look similar, although their meanings are very different. The only sure way to avoid confusing such words is not to use them at all. If we keep in mind which words pose these problems, then we can always find other words to use in our academic research papers and theses that mean the same thing. The noun enormity means something extremely serious that is seen as bad or morally wrong. Enormity derives from a Latin term that means something different from legal or moral behavior. The noun enormousness has a different meaning. It signifies something of great size. As in the adjective enormous, the noun enormousness refers to immensity or hugeness. Enormousness originates with a Latin term meaning unusually huge. A common mistake even among native speakers of English is to use the term enormity when what is meant is enormousness. That error can give the impression that we wish to say something negative about something that is just noteworthy for its size. Even in legal documentation, where words must be weighed carefully, this mistake occurs, as we see in Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage:

Put simply, the enormity [read enormousness] of the award is matched by the enormity [read enormousness] of the plaintiff’s damages. Pouliot v. Paul Arpin Van Lines, Inc., 235 F.R.D. 537, 551 (D. Conn. 2006). (In this sentence, the writer no doubt intended to refer to the magnitude [enormousness] of the award, not its ghastliness.)

If we remember that the word enormity can lead to confusion, we can follow the simple suggestion:

When in doubt, leave it out.

Generally in academic research papers and theses, it is best to avoid words that appear to be exaggerated, such as huge, enormous, vast, and other such terms. Instead of using these adjectives, we might write instead significant, sizeable, or other words that are less associated with excitement. The legal writer quoted in Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage could have avoided the error by instead of writing

Put simply, the significant size of the award is matched by the significant size of the plaintiff’s damages.

or

Put simply, the considerable size of the award is matched by the considerable size of the plaintiff’s damages.

By choosing instead to write the incorrect

Put simply, the enormity of the award is matched by the enormity of the plaintiff’s damages,

the writer appears to reflect the excitement of a small child in front of an elephant at a nature park, saying “It’s enormous! It’s huge!” Another problem with emotional adjectives such as enormous is that they are sometimes taken by readers to be meant as a joke. Since all writers of academic research papers and theses want to be taken seriously by readers, we do not want to risk the possibility of having people think what we suggest seriously is meant as a comic exaggeration or ironic statement. To increase the probability that this will not happen, we may watch out for the word enormity, and not use it in our writing unless we are absolutely sure that its meaning is correct for the content.

Some usage examples follow:

• Listening to The Kid as he recounted something that happened to him on his way to his voluntary work placement I was suddenly struck by the enormousness of his achievement.
• The central fact here is the enormousness of the potential resource pie.
• As I see it, there is still another telling Kafkaesque dimension to Watergate now that President Ford has written his version of The End. It is the enormousness of the frustration that has taken hold in America ever since Compassionate Sunday, the sense of waste, futility, and hopelessness that now attaches to the monumental efforts that had been required just to begin to get at the truth. – Philip Roth.
• He stepped out a few feet from the left, a small, almost frail figure lost in the enormousness of this great proscenium arch. He did not bow or raise his hands or do anything but just stood there and let wave after wave of cheers and applause wash over him like a great wave breaking over a rock.
• “Get out,” she ordered again, but she could hear a despicable weakness in her own voice, and apparently he could, too, because he made no move toward the door. Instead he folded his arms over the enormousness of his chest and gazed down.
• And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we moved. – Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
• Michelle began to apprehend that she might not get her civilian identity back again. How had she misplaced something so vital? The soldiers in training assumed they might be sent somewhere soon, but they could get no hard information. In this fashion, Michelle came to appreciate the enormousness of the commitment she had made to the military.
• From the air, on a flight in, what the eye mostly picks out from the megacity’s stunning enormousness is a dense mosaic of flat rooftops, tiny rectangles and squares, and a preponderance of reddish brown, the volcanic tezontle stone that has forever been the city’s most common construction material, also other shades of brown brick and paint, imposing an underlying coloration scheme.
• The huge amount of documents distributed over the WWW can be regarded as easily accessible resources of domain-specific knowledge. However users may also be annoyed with the quantitative enormousness, qualitative irregularity, and unfamiliarity of contents of the documents arising from easy accessiblity to specific domains and the unstructuredness of the WWW.
• Can superhighways make good houses? We have all driven on highways without realizing their enormousness.
• In the 1890s, Chicago style enormousness spread to New York City as Henry Siegel built a store on Sixth Avenue.
• We cannot, from a purely human point of view, begin to grasp the enormousness of the spiritual war that has raged on unabated for so many centuries.
• By presenting this list of principles in a single sentence, Douglass underscores the extent to which he views these various convictions as part of a coherent philosophy, while emphasizing as well the enormousness of the challenges involved.
• In the United States, many of the homefront children contended with the war’s enormity. The second enormity was the atomic bomb.
• Agnieszka Holland’s film uses a fragment of the Holocaust story to hint at its enormity.
• The enormity of the stress and anxiety of simply living in a refurbished tower block in England today can hardly be imagined.
• Some predict disaster while others focus on the enormity of the challenge ahead as the world reels from the shock of the new American president-elect.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).