Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Immense; enormous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Like or likened to an inhabitant of the fabled region of Brobdingnag in Swift's “Gulliver's Travels”; hence, of enormous size; gigantic.
- n. A gigantic person.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of or pertaining to Brobdingnag.
- adj. figuratively Enormous, huge, far larger than is customary for such a thing.
- n. A creature from Brobdingnag.
- n. figuratively A giant.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Colossal; of extraordinary height; gigantic.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. huge; relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Brobdingnag
- adj. unusually great in size or amount or degree or especially extent or scope
Etymologies
- From Brobdingnag + -ian. (Wiktionary)
- After Brobdingnag, a country in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, where everything was enormous. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In my opinion we need to chill out on all extremist plans that entail expenses best described as Brobdingnagian, require our intervention into developing countries best portrayed as imperialistic, or involve state controls best portrayed as fascistic.”
Michael Shermer: Chill Out: An Economic Triage for Global Climate Change
“Lilliputian heads -- great though the girth of the stem may be -- conveys rather the idea of Brobdingnagian piles driven in by giants, and exhibiting the last flickerings of vitality in a few puny sprouts at their summit.”
Lands of the Slave and the Free Cuba, the United States, and Canada
“As hedge-fund managers such as Whitney Tilson have discovered, Netflix is living a kind of Brobdingnagian existence.”
The Wall Street Journal: Time to Hit Pause Button on Netflix
“Gulliver's Travels is the book that has defined gigantic and miniature creatures, giving us adjectives such as 'Brobdingnagian' as well as the expression "Yahoo" for an uncivilized ruffian.”
“He brought me upwards into a room crammed with strange machinery, all cranks and levers and wires and pulleys, and before us two great cylinders like unto a "Brobdingnagian" music box.”
“Illuminated by a mile of tubing, they were like slides for a Brobdingnagian projector.”
“In "Lorraine, France" 1999, two huge, tubalike configurations are streaked from the effects of time, but their complexity, similarity, Brobdingnagian scale and Mr. Bourdeau's decorous treatment of them make an image both sweet and solemn.”
“Hirst's gigantic Brobdingnagian tray is filled with the contents of several bin bags, apparently all from a night at the Groucho club in the days when members could chain it.”
The Guardian: The 10 best ... New Year's resolution paintings
“Danger looms when future rents look as if they can't grow fast enough to satisfy the market's Brobdingnagian expectations.”
House Prices, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Brobdingnagian’.
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There's a word for it
catkin, pastiche, badonkadonk, biome, omphaloscopy, pogonophobia, reptation, anathema, xyst, commodify, commoditize, monetize and 69 more...
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Words with unusual spellings or pronu...
Herein are listed words with oddball spellings and words whose pronunciation does not reflect the spelling.
eleemosynary, Wednesday, colonel, posslq, zaqqum, qwerty, cinquefoil, qibla(h), minuscule, Cholmondeley, polyphloisboian, ptisan and 67 more...
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Actual Words
I checked, because I wasn't sure, but these words were coined and entered into a dictionary before I thought them up.
dishevelment, commoditize, feck, foppery, grimoire, apposite, impassible, reparable, arithmomania, patois, absquatulate, scopperil and 18 more...
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Words for Big
Words, terms and phrases that denote big, bigness, or making something bigger.
enlarge, giant, giantess, biggify, enormous, enhance, augment, whopper, swell, swollen, inflated, gigantic and 54 more...
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Mispronounced
Words I’ve mispronounced over the years (and a few I still have trouble saying today).
detritus, chitinous, miscegenation, fetishism, aurora, paladin, primer, Eritrean, hegemony, long-lived, corps, potpourri and 13 more...
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Misspelled
Armageddon, cappuccino, capsaicin, fuchsia, Mediterranean, gauge, proselytize, sandwich, cylinder, capital, à la, mozzarella and 14 more...
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Words of this December
I have just discovered this website, and have just delved once more into the exciting world of highly specific or nice-sounding words. This will be chock full of the best ones I discover this month.
splanchnic, adumbrate, sacrilicious, simulacrum, nacreous, concupiscence, cryptomnesia, obdormition, susurrous, vorpal, corybantic, sesquipedalian and 16 more...
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Books invade language
Words that originated in books.
Brobdingnagian, Bunburying, Bunbury, Pangloss, Micawber, Jeremiah, Pollyanna, cassandra, Svengali, Barmecidal, mitty, Mitty and 9 more...
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Words I've used in papers
Tweets
Looking for tweets for Brobdingnagian.
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