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immense

UK/ɪˈmɛns/US/ɪˈmɛns/
adjectiveC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,627 of 15,258neutral

Immense means extremely large, beyond easy measure. An immense building, immense pressure, immensely grateful.

It works for physical size and for abstract quantity alike — immense wealth, immense relief, immense damage — and it is stronger than huge in tone if not in dimension. Immensely is used as a plain intensifier meaning very. Note that the word literally means unmeasured, from in- plus mensus, so an immense thing is one that cannot be taken in; and immensity, which is the noun.

Definitions of immense

  1. 1adjectiveimmenseExtremely large, beyond easy measure.C1

    “The cathedral's immense dome can be seen from miles away.”

    synonyms: vast, enormous

immense is a quality of vastness.

Also accepted in games: huge, vast

Where it comes from

Latin immensus is in-, not, plus mensus, measured. Measure, dimension and immensity come from the same measuring, so immense means beyond measuring.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *meh₁-

  2. Latin

    immensus

  3. Old French

    immense

  4. Middle English

    immens

  5. English, today

    immense

Built from

  • in- · Latin — not
  • mensus · Latin — measured

From Middle English immens, inmens, from Old French immense, from Latin immensus, from in- (“not”) + mensus (“measured”). Compare incommensurable.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

Practise this word

immense in the wild

  • In both sources, Yggdrasil is an immense ash tree that is central to the cosmos and considered very holy.

    Yggdrasil

  • The crater is located toward the southern end of this immense feature, just to the north of the Montes Cordillera range.

    Focas (lunar crater)

  • The stakes in these stories are immense, and the fate of a country is often in the hands of one individual.

    Political thriller

  • Believing his immense strength could prevent the cave-in, he held his hands up to the roof, trying to support it as the rocks crashed down around him.

    Polydamas of Skotoussa

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.

Related words

  • immensity