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colossal

UK/kəˈlɒsəl/US/kəˈlɑsəl/
adjectiveB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,084 of 15,258neutral

Colossal means unbelievably huge. A colossal building, a colossal mistake, colossal sums.

It works for size and for scale of error alike — a colossal waste, a colossal failure — and it is one of the strongest words available for both. It comes from the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze statue about thirty metres high that stood for barely sixty years before an earthquake brought it down. Note colossus; and that the word is used far more often about mistakes than about statues.

Definitions of colossal

  1. 1adjectivecolossalUnbelievably huge.B2

    “The new stadium was a colossal waste of money.”

    synonyms: enormous, immense

colossal is a quality of hugeness.

Also accepted in games: enormous, gigantic

Where it comes from

Greek kolossos meant a giant statue, and the Colossus of Rhodes was the famous one. French colossal gave English the adjective, so colossal is literally statue-sized.

  1. French

    colossal

  2. English, today

    colossal

From French colossal. From French colossal, formed from Latin colossus, from Ancient Greek κολοσσός (“giant statue”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

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colossal in the wild

  • The Younger Memnon is an Ancient Egyptian statue, one of two colossal granite statues from the Ramesseum mortuary temple in Thebes, Upper Egypt.

    Younger Memnon

  • A colossal statue is one that is more than twice life-size.

    List of colossal sculptures in situ

  • The colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III is a granite head of the 18th Dynasty ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

    Colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III

  • Two parts of the broken colossal statue are known: the head and an arm.

    Colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III

  • The colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III is an ancient Egyptian sculpture dating from the 18th Dynasty.

    Colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.