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gargantuan
[ gahr-gan-choo-uhn ]
adjective
- gigantic; enormous; colossal:
a gargantuan task.
Synonyms: elephantine, vast, immense, mammoth, huge
gargantuan
/ ɡɑːˈɡæntjʊən /
adjective
- sometimes capital huge; enormous
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Usage
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Word History and Origins
Origin of gargantuan1
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Example Sentences
That incredible growth for such a gargantuan company helped the e-commerce and cloud giant make the 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list for a fourth straight year, ranking No.
In their next gargantuan step, the team analyzed data from roughly 740,000 people who had either tested positive for Covid-19 or were presumed positive.
GPT-3 seems to capture an impressive amount of latent knowledge about the world, knowledge that is implicitly encoded in statistical patterns in the distribution of words across its gargantuan training corpus.
Given the gargantuan size of many astronomical datasets, the method could greatly boost the speed of discovery for world-hunting.
A very long time ago, gargantuan grasshoppers and massive mayflies cruised the planet.
Today, researchers are flummoxed as to the whereabouts of this gargantuan cultural artifact.
There are gargantuan histories of the birth of hip-hop, many of which Ed used for his research.
And as far as trolls go, ESPN is like Jotnar, the gargantuan mountain troll wreaking havoc in the Trollhunter films.
In person, you can see why it proved such a gargantuan task.
The U.S. Embassy and its support staff grew to gargantuan proportions, only to be “right-sized” later on.
The sight of that gargantuan sweep of cliff coming on top of the weariness of the journey had crushed her.
My supplies may well be too generous; and it might be prudent to try a little dieting after this Gargantuan good cheer.
Startled out of his Gargantuan slumber by the revolver's loud report, Howard sat up with a jump and rubbed his eyes.
Stories are told of gargantuan feeds—of majestic stews that can be scented even in the German lines.
The chief trouble at Kazeh, as elsewhere, arose from the green scorpion, but there were also lizards and gargantuan spiders.
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More About Gargantuan
What does gargantuan mean?
Gargantuan means extraordinarily large or huge. Some things are more than huge—they’re gargantuan.
The word is commonly applied to physical objects whose size makes you marvel with awe. Blue whales are gargantuan. Skyscrapers are gargantuan. The Grand Canyon is gargantuan.
But it can also be applied to intangible things, as in With all the champagne and caviar that we ordered, the bill for dinner is going to be gargantuan.
It is especially associated with things involving food, such as a gargantuan appetite or a gargantuan meal.
Similar adjectives are gigantic, giant, colossal, and mammoth. A more formal synonym is massive. More informal synonyms are humongous and ginormous.
Something might be considered gargantuan only in comparison to other similar things. For example, an unusually large grapefruit might be described as gargantuan even though it’s not all that big in general—it’s simply gargantuan compared to normal-sized grapefruits. Still, it’s usually used to describe things that are objectively huge, like redwood trees or the planet Jupiter.
Gargantuan is sometimes casually used to mean extremely important or significant—much like the figurative use of big and huge. Sometimes, this is negative, as in gargantuan error or gargantuan failure.
Example: You don’t realize how gargantuan the sun is until you see an image of a planet next to it for scale.
Where does gargantuan come from?
The first records of the word gargantuan come from the late 1500s. It comes from Gargantua, the name of a giant king from the 1534 satirical novel Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais. In the novel, Gargantua is known for his gargantuan appetite—hence the word’s association with food. Gargantua’s son, Pantagruel, is also a giant.
Gargantuan is usually reserved for things that are truly, spectacularly huge, or things that exist in amounts that are far greater than what is usual, as in The lottery jackpot is truly gargantuan—it is now over $1 billion.
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What are some synonyms for gargantuan?
What are some words that share a root or word element with gargantuan?
What are some words that often get used in discussing gargantuan?
How is gargantuan used in real life?
Gargantuan is especially applied to things involving food. Otherwise, it’s typically used to describe things that are truly massive.
There’s no way this culinary day in #DitmasPark could be completed by anyone with a less-than-gargantuan appetite http://t.co/b4boUGglAg
— Edible Brooklyn (@EdibleBrooklyn) August 10, 2015
Foodies Festival comes to Battersea Park this Friday for a gargantuan gastro feast @foodiesfestival http://t.co/3lrparQpKh
— Telegraph Luxury (@TelegraphLuxury) August 12, 2014
The massive body of a beached blue whale viscerally captivates human curiosity. This meditative film observes spectators as they wonder at the gargantuan carcass. From the Aeon Video archive: https://t.co/lnYoRdEWt2 pic.twitter.com/41N5NVEQAT
— Aeon+Psyche (@aeonmag) March 20, 2019
Try using gargantuan!
Which of the following words is a synonym of gargantuan?
A. gigantic
B. massive
C. enormous
D. all of the above
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