Dictionary

cromulent en · ADJ

Pronunciation

(Southern-England) audio
/-jə-/ (General-American)
/-jə-/ (Received-Pronunciation)
(US) audio
/ˈkɹɑmjʊlənt/ (General-American)
/ˈkɹɒmjʊlənt/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

A humorous, intentionally morphologically opaque neologism and nonce word coined by American television writer David X. Cohen for “Lisa the Iconoclast”, a 1996 episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons. The ending resembles corpulent, temulent and other Latinate adjectives (derived from -ulentus (“full of, abounding in”)).

Meanings

(humorous) Acceptable, satisfactory, or valid.
- Mrs. Krabappel: "Embiggens"? I never heard that word before moving to Springfield. Ms. Hoover: I don't know why; it's a perfectly cromulent word. […] Principal Skinner: He's embiggened that role with his cromulent performance. 1996 February 18, David X. Cohen, “Lisa the Iconoclast”, in The Simpsons, season 7, episode 16, production code 3F13:
- He had a boundless passion for music and entertained many with his beautiful voice and perfectly cromulent sense of humor. 2006 April 10, “Obituaries and in memoriams: Benjamin Sidney Linton”, in The Charlotte Observer:
- Of course, you may encounter a new program that doesn't work reliably with UNC paths, and this is a perfectly cromulent workaround. 2008, David A. Karp, “Users and Security”, in John Osborn, Laurel R. T. Ruma, editors, Windows Vista Annoyances (Tips, Secrets and Solutions), Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, →OL, page 505:
- Nerdcore could rise up, it could get elevated. Oh, and wouldn’t all of those tough rappers hate it if the nerdcore rose up and got elevated. We consider the possibleness of this not overstated. And I know that "possibleness" is not a cromulent word; every syllable injected is intended to be the one you heard (an absurd juxtaposition of mission and goal). 2005 August 27, MC Frontalot, “Nerdcore Rising”, in Nerdcore Rising:
- There are certainly other cromulent techniques which may perform well for certain models and assumptions. 2008, Alan M. Polansky, “Connections and Comparisons”, in Observed Confidence Levels: Theory and Application, Boca Raton, Florida: Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, →ISBN, →OL, section 7.3 (Multiple Comparisons), page 216:
- Of course, it is perfectly cromulent to ask how we know anything about the young Sun, since, well, it was a long time ago and we were not there. 2022 February 14, Greg Brennecka, “One: Important Early Meteorite Strikes”, in Impact How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong, HarperCollins, →ISBN:
- How well does this function work? For positive integers, it's perfectly cromulent: […] 2009, Bryan O'Sullivan, John Goerzen, Don Stewart, “Functional Programming”, in Mike Loukides, editor, Real World Haskell (Code You Can Believe In), Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, →OL, page 86: