Talk:The Captain's Doll
 | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
"Enormity" vs. "Enormousness"
editAs I've explained on your talk page, this all too common English usage error, has nothing at all to do with "local dialect." Given that you are evidently British and have displayed over your history of edits here a very marked preference for your own "local dialect," I refer you to the entry for "enormity" in the highly respected (British) Compact Oxford English Dictionary:
enormity
1 [mass noun] (the enormity of) the great or extreme scale , seriousness, or extent of something perceived as bad or morally wrong:a thorough search disclosed the full enormity of the crime
(in neutral use) large size or scale:I began to get a sense of the enormity of the task
2 a grave crime or sin:the enormities of war
Origin:
late Middle English: via Old French from Latin enormitas, from enormis, from e- (variant of ex-) 'out of' + norma 'pattern, standard'. The word originally meant ‘deviation from legal or moral rectitude’ and ‘transgression’. Current senses have been influenced by enormous
Usage
Enormity traditionally means‘ the extreme scale or seriousness of something bad or morally wrong’, as in residents of the town were struggling to deal with the enormity of the crime. Today, however , a more neutral sense as a synonym for hugeness or immensity, as in he soon discovered the enormity of the task, is common. Some people regard this use as wrong, arguing that enormity in its original sense meant ‘a crime’ and should therefore continue to be used only of contexts in which a negative moral judgement is implied. Nevertheless, the sense is now broadly accepted in standard English, although it generally relates to something difficult, such as a task, challenge, or achievement
The sentence in the The Captain's Doll namepge that I'd edited did not use "enormity" to characterize "something difficult, such as a task, challenge, or achievement," so its usage to apply to an object -- "this natural wonder" (referring to the mountain) -- was incorrect as a matter of even "modern" standard English, even in its least prescriptive BRITISH application:
The couple ascend the mountain together, and the sheer enormity of this natural wonder prompts discussion of the smallness of a human being in comparison, bringing the Captain to make megalomaniacal claims that he is indeed bigger than the mountain.