gigantic

UK/d͡ʒaɪˈɡæntɪk/US/d͡ʒaɪˈɡæntɪk/

adjectiveB1Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,301 of 15,258neutral

Gigantic means huge — so big that the size is the first thing you notice and the last thing you forget. A gigantic wave, a gigantic queue curling round the building, a gigantic dog that still thinks it is a lap dog.

It sits above big and large, level with enormous and massive, and it works for real size and for exaggeration alike: a gigantic mistake, a gigantic waste of an afternoon. Because it is already at the top, very gigantic sounds wrong to a native ear — absolutely gigantic is how English pushes it further. The giant inside the word is still visible, which is why it suits things with a shape you can picture: a gigantic statue, gigantic ears, a gigantic hole in the road. For amounts and abstractions, enormous and huge do the same job more quietly.

Definitions of gigantic

1adjectivegiganticExtremely large.B1
“A gigantic crane lifted the whole roof section into place.”
synonyms: enormous, colossal, immense, vast

Where it comes from

Gigantic comes straight from Ancient Greek γιγαντικός, built on γίγας, 'giant'. The Poly-Olbion project credits the poet Michael Drayton with putting the English word into print in 1612, which makes gigantic younger than most of Shakespeare's plays — though the giant inside it is thousands of years older.

Ancient Greek
γιγαντικός
English, today
gigantic

Built from

γίγας · Ancient Greek — giant

From Ancient Greek γιγαντικός, ultimately from γίγας (“giant”). According to the [http://poly-olbion.exeter.ac.uk/the-text/words/gigantic/ Poly-Olbion project] coined by Michael Drayton in 1612.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Adjectives, A Man Called Ove, Dinosaurs & Prehistory

First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

gigantic in the wild

M'Bombo was said to appear like a gigantic man in form and white in colour.
Bushongo religion
With gigantic power-generation facilities from the Soviet era and an ample supply of natural gas, Uzbekistan has become the largest electricity producer in Central Asia.
Uzbekistan
In August 1941, he was appointed to create the gigantic office complex for the War Department's 40,000 staff that would ultimately become the Pentagon.
Leslie Groves
Temples to Aiyanar in the countryside are usually flanked by gigantic colourful statues of him and his companions riding horses or elephants.
Aiyanar
Mars now appeared as a gigantic rosy moon filling the whole vault of the heavens above them.
A Honeymoon in Space· George Chetwynd Griffith

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.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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