Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of immense size, volume, or capacity; gigantic. See Synonyms at enormous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to or characteristic of Gargantua (see etymology); hence, great beyond credibility; enormous; prodigious; Brobdingnagian.
Wiktionary
- adj. obsolete Of the giant Gargantua or his appetite.
- adj. Huge; immense; tremendous.
- adj. Of a tremendous size, volume, degree, etc.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Characteristic of Gargantua, a gigantic, wonderful personage; enormous; prodigious; inordinate.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of great mass; huge and bulky
Etymologies
- From Gargantua, a giant with a very large appetite in Rabelais's The Inestimable Life of Gargantua. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The Washington Post reported on May 12 that "sources with knowledge of the program" said that the Bush administration had been collecting the domestic telephone records in "gargantuan databases" and that the "companies cooperating with the NSA dominate the U.S. telecommunications market and connect hundreds of billions of telephone calls each year.”
“I almost bailed when I saw that the images were wrapped up in gargantuan Flash downloadables, but I'm glad I didn't.”
“Ace called her gargantuan Sasquatch and that set me into a laughing fit.”
“We should recall the gargantuan effort that was required to return to the Jewish people thousands of children who had been hidden during World War II.”
“Astronomers study 'gargantuan' Jupiter impact - An unseen comet or possibly an icy asteroid apparently crashed into Jupiter's atmosphere near the giant planet's south pole sometime during the last few days, creating a "gargantuan" blemish easily visible from Earth.”
“And while yesterday's new measures are "gargantuan," they were "probably not the last of the federal government's initiatives to absorb the shocks that began with losses on subprime mortgages and have spread to every corner of the economy," the Times adds.”
“Chez Papa, a small Paris chain serving food from France's southwest, where I ordered a "gargantuan" salad, ham covered and potato filled and a carafe of water for 10 euros, leaving 2.12 euros in my budget.”
“Southern Union, a charity that transferred "gargantuan" amounts of money between the U.K. and”
“Southern Union, a registered charity which transferred "gargantuan" amounts of money between the UK and Zimbabwe.”
Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
“Researchers have predicted the existence of a new kind of gargantuan molecule, large enough to dwarf a virus, that looks weird and acts even weirder.”
Latest Science News Features, Blog Entries, Column Entries, Issues, Articles and Book Reviews
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gargantuan’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Imprecise Units of Measurement
A list of terms for units of measurement that are less than exact, such as dessert-spoonful.
two shakes, dessert-spoonful, a pinch, a bit, some, smidge, smidgin, dollop, drop, fleck, smack, sprinkling and 187 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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lou2050's list
chortle, crapulence, tomfoolery, salacious, cacophony, smock, gravitas, facetious, gargantuan, ubiquitous, preposterous
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9-16 letter words without E
abduction, abolitionist, abomination, actuality, addiction, administration, admission, ambiguous, anticlimactic, application, arachnophobia, arthropathy and 186 more...
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HollieGolightly's list
indigo, flippant, quaint, ebullience, subterfuge, conspicuous, surreptitiously, kodachrome, doppelganger, hullabaloo, nabob, motley and 21 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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EN - trendy lifestyle words
private, tenacious, vogue, hoard, landscape, extravaganza, besiege, eatery, wrest, refurbish, enticing, breakout and 24 more...
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Ugliest Sounding Words
List words that sound ugly, regardless of meaning
kumquat, milk, meal, jizz, bubonic, fester, goulash, sasquatch, carbuncle, sieve, onomatopoeia, burlesque and 29 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
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Reading Vocab
ulterior, warrant, syllogism, precious, impiety, maroon, aigrette, batiste, topsy-turvy ago, midnight crush, cantankerous, slovenly and 180 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, G
grocer, gabanergic, gabardine, gabbro, gaffe, gneiss, grapple, grosgrain, grommet, gratify, gossamer, goofy and 194 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gargantuan.
bluedust First time I heard this word was Kill Bill Vol. 2 Feb 3, 2012
spicolli "You know, I've always liked that word... 'gargantuan'... so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence." Kill Bill Vol. 2 Jun 14, 2009