Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Very great in size, extent, number, or degree.
- adj. Archaic Very wicked; heinous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Deviating from or transgressing the usual measure or rule; abnormal.
- Spreading or extending beyond certain limits; redundant.
- Greatly surpassing the common measure; exceeding the usual size: as, enormous debts; a man of enormous size.
- Extremely wicked; uncommonly atrocious: as, enormous crime or guilt.
- Disordered; perverse.
- Synonyms Enormous, Immense, Excessive, huge, vast, monstrous, prodigious, gigantic, immoderate, unwieldy. The first three words agree in expressing greatness, and the first two vastness; anything, however small, is excessive if for some special reason too great in amount. Literally, enormous is out of rule, out of proportion; immense, unmeasured, immeasurable; excessive, going beyond bounds, surpassing what is fit, right, tolerable, etc. Enormous is peculiarly applicable to magnitude, primarily physical, but also moral: as, enormous egotism; immense, to extent, quantity, and number: as, an immense national debt; immense folly; excessive, to degree: as, an excessive dose; an excessive opinion of one's own merits.
- Villainous, Abominable, etc. (see nefarious); heinous, atrocious.
Wiktionary
- adj. obsolete Deviating from the norm; unusual, extraordinary.
- adj. obsolete Exceedingly wicked; atrocious or outrageous.
- adj. Extremely large; greatly exceeding the common size, extent, etc.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Exceeding the usual rule, norm, or measure; out of due proportion; inordinate; abnormal.
- adj. Exceedingly wicked; outrageous; atrocious; monstrous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. extraordinarily large in size or extent or amount or power or degree
Etymologies
- From Latin ēnormis. (Wiktionary)
- From Latin ēnormis, unusual, huge, monstrous : ē-, ex-, ex- + norma, norm. Sense 2, from Middle English enormious, from Latin ēnormis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“And I think it sees what you referred to as enormous Indian influence as part of the strategy -- Indian strategy, as, you know, trying to destabilize Pakistan.”
“In his message he asked for prayers to undertake what he calls the enormous task in front of him in Iraq.”
“In his message, he asked for prayers to undertake what he called the enormous task in front of him.”
“Those relationships, Scales says, build what he calls enormous influence with Egypt.”
“Mr Abbott also highlighted what he called the enormous waste of programs like the insulation and Building the Education Revolution programs.”
“Within enormous painted domes, arches and carved wood furniture entertain the eye during mass.”
“MoveOn has put in enormous effort over many years to put itself into a position of leverage.”
“After 8 long years I found that he'd squandered all my hard-earned savings from the previous 8 years, put me in enormous debt and had given me the biggest dose of clap in the history of the world.”
“These were many of the same people who two years ago were turning out in enormous numbers to see Obama in the final weeks of the campaign, crowds of 75,000 or 100,000 in places like St. Louis and Denver.”
The Washington Post: Tea party fuels GOP midterm enthusiasm, action
“We're asked by the show's writers to indulge in enormous suspension of disbelief on this major plot development, on which much of the rest of the season will apparently turn.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘enormous’.
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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The weird, the wonderful and the plai...
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
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BIG Words
Awesome words that just mean "BIG"
gargantuan, massive, behemoth, colossal, mammoth, monumental, leviathan, immense, enormous, elephantine, astronomical, whopping and 18 more...
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1500 word lists
TOEFL iBT - 1500 Academic Words
exhume, excess, explode, exceed, expenditure, expectant, exhibition, eutrophication, eruption, erode, ethical, enterprise and 142 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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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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GRE AWA
escalating, vehement, vehemence, hostility, paparazzi, regime, irrespective, scoop, exaggerated, overblown, unfetter, scrupulous and 272 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
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Faintheart's Words
onomatopoeia, no, terrafactive, word, faint, heart, joy, quixotic, karla, half, amp, tardis and 181 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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ESL Academic Word List
This is a list of academic words for students learning English as a Second or Foreign Language. It includes 570 word families that often appear in academic texts. It does not include words that are...
collapse, depression, colleagues, invoked, levy, nonetheless, likewise, so-called, ongoing, conceived, forthcoming, integrity and 558 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for enormous.

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