There's this – potentially apocryphal – story that the etymology of the term "monkey patch" comes from someone mistaking the then-current term "guerilla patch"

There's this – potentially apocryphal – story that the etymology of the term "monkey patch" comes from someone mistaking the then-current term "guerilla patch" for the similar-sounding "gorilla patch". Big data seems like a very similar story to me. It has nothing to do with the size of the data, not even with the complexity of the analysis, it simply means, "a movement that wants to do more with more kinds of data." Nowhere near what big data used to mean, but outside of technical circles, we're beyond the point where that even matters anymore.