BEIJING, July 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Merriam-Webster has added "ginormous" -- a combination of gigantic and enormous -- and about 100 other new words to the company's collegiate dictionary that goes on sale this fall. As always, the yearly list gives meaning to the latest lingo in pop culture, technology and current events.

    There's "crunk," a style of Southern rap music; and the abbreviated "DVR" for digital video recorder and "IED" for the improvised explosive devices that have become common in the war in Iraq.

    Other new words include "smackdowns" (contests in entertainment wrestling) and "telenovelas" (Latin-American soap operas), "gray literature" (hard-to-get written material) and "microgreen" (a shoot of a standard salad plant).

    "There will be linguistic conservatives who will turn their nose up at a word like `ginormous,'" said John Morse, Merriam-Webster's president. "But it's become a part of our language. It's used by professional writers in mainstream publications. It clearly has staying power."

    Merriam-Webster traces ginormous back to 1948, when it appeared in a British dictionary of military slang.

    Visitors to the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's website picked "ginormous" as their favorite word that's not in the dictionary in 2005, and Merriam-Webster editors have spotted it in countless newspaper and magazine articles since 2000.

    That's essentially the criteria for making it into the collegiate dictionary ¡ª if a word shows up often enough in mainstream writing, the editors consider defining it.

    But as editor Jim Lowe puts it: "Nobody has to use `ginormous' if they don't want to."

    (Agencies)