Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A person or thing of great size.
- n. A person or thing of extraordinary power, significance, or importance: a giant in the field of physics; automotive industry giants.
- n. Greek Mythology One of a race of humanlike beings of enormous strength and stature who were destroyed in battle with the Olympians.
- n. A being in folklore or myth similar to one of these beings.
- adj. Marked by exceptionally great size, magnitude, or power: a giant wave; a giant impact.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In classical mythology, one of a divine but monstrous race, children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gæa (Earth), and personifying destructive physical phenomena, as those of volcanic origin. They were subdued by the Olympian gods after a war which forms a favorite subject in ancient art (see
gigantomachy ), and typifies the inherent opposition between darkness and light. - n. Some other imaginary being of human form but superhuman size: as, Giant Despair, in Bunyan's “Pilgrim's Progress.”
- n. Figuratively, a person of unusual size or of extraordinary powers, physical or mental.
- Gigantic; of extraordinary size or force, actual or relative: as, “the giant world,” ; a giant intellect.
- n. In gold-mining, a large nozle used to direct the powerful streams employed in hydraulic work. See cut under hydraulic.
Wiktionary
- n. A mythical human of very great size
- n. mythology Specifically, any of the Gigantes, the race of giants in the Greek mythology.
- n. A very tall person.
- n. A tall species of a particular animal or plant.
- n. astronomy A star that is considerably more luminous than a main sequence star of the same temperature (eg. red giant, blue giant).
- n. computing An Ethernet packet that exceeds the medium's maximum packet size of 1,518 bytes.
- n. A very large organisation.
- adj. very large
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A man of extraordinari bulk and stature.
- n. A person of extraordinary strength or powers, bodily or intellectual.
- n. Any animal, plant, or thing, of extraordinary size or power.
- adj. Like a giant; extraordinary in size, strength, or power
WordNet 3.0
- n. a very large person; impressive in size or qualities
- n. someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful
- n. a person of exceptional importance and reputation
- n. an unusually large enterprise
- adj. of great mass; huge and bulky
- n. any creature of exceptional size
- n. an imaginary figure of superhuman size and strength; appears in folklore and fairy tales
- n. a very bright star of large diameter and low density (relative to the Sun)
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek γίγας (gigas, "giant"), Middle English geant, from Old French geant, gaiant (Modern French géant) from Vulgar Latin *gagās, gagant-, from Latin gigās, gigant-. Cognate to giga- ("1,000,000,000"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French geant, jaiant, from Vulgar Latin *gagās, *gagant-, from Latin gigās, from Greek. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“As Brazil prepares to elect a successor to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Oct. 31, the Latin American giant is widely considered an economic success story among emerging markets.”
The Washington Post: Brazilian scientists turning nation into an agro-power
“Well who now doesn't remember the phrase "giant sucking sound"?”
The Huffington Post: Paul Tullis: What Obama Forgot About Change in Washington
“I hate to disappoint the world," he continued, "but the term giant doesn't really fit.”
“The pizza giant is also considering launching the new pizza recipe in some international markets.”
The Wall Street Journal: Domino's Offers Deal to Increase Check Size
“We have to be grateful for the fact that this giant is a democracy and one that is friendly towards us, ready to help its friends.”
“Let the lion and the lamb, says Germany, let the giant and the dwarf fight it out alone; the giant is my partner.”
“As John makes the rounds, greeting old friends and charming new neighbors, opening week at 601 Union has Marie happily reeling from what she describes as a "giant love fest.”
“And then at a certain point, toward the end of their lives, they become much bigger, up to 100 times the size, and become what we call giant stars.”
“You don't often find a club referring to itself as "sleeping," even if the adjective is followed by the word "giant.”
“Now that's what you call a giant PR slip-up THIS is what happens when you miss a decimal point.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘giant’.
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Coal Mining Terms
Coal mining has engendered fascinating subcultures in industry, labor, music, folklore, environment and energy. It has a rich vocabulary as well, and I've encountered some gorgeous mining words. I...
firedamp, scrip, bituminous, anthracite, company store, blackdamp, brattice, bug dust, tipple, whitedamp, float dust, fly ash and 136 more...
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®emovies
Movies or TV shows where the titles are also common words, generally one-word titles.
lost, alien, bug, elephant, siege, gladiator, flock, captivity, piano, roots, freaks, moonstruck and 269 more...
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MYTH - spooky creatures
carrion-eater, solar bird, giant boar, black dog, guardian, fire giant, marsh nymph, fish pike, undead, skeleton, horned snake, pegasus and 607 more...
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Words that are also movies
Unabashedly stolen from a comment made by courier12.
vertigo, serendipity, casablanca, psycho, jaws, fantasia, stagecoach, network, rocky, giant, platoon, unforgiven and 285 more...
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supernatural creatures according to M...
Turned this up on etymonline.com (link). It's amazing.
Hobbit (n.)
1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole...ghost, boggle, bloody-bones, spirit, demon, ignis fatuus, brownie, bugbear, black dog, specter, shellycoat, scarecrow and 186 more...
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Dungeons and Dragons
Would you like to join our party? We just started a new campaign.
For more general lists about role-playing games, see brandelion's RPG and lampbane's Tales of the Dread Gazebo.dungeons and dragons, d&d, elf, orc, halfling, drow, giant, troll, kobold, rpg, d20, human and 100 more...
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Mythical Beings
mermaid, manticore, fairy, brownie, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, selkie, gremlin, puck, pixie, genie and 97 more...
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Adjectives
sagacious, average, angry, mad, crazy, giant, ugly, pretty, happy, sad, lonely, solitary and 119 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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Words that relate to Pandas
panda-like, attack, bamboo, China, endangered, bear, forest, jungle, canopy, cub, play, roll and 10 more...
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the new economy
frightening
zombie banks, toxic asset, zombie bank, foreclosure, giant, bailout, mortgage, paycheck to paycheck, rent, stimulus, aig, market and 3 more...
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Adjectives for XKCD936-compliant pass...
A list of 2048 common English adjectives that could be used to create plausible, memorable random phrases.
I'm going to use this list in a password generator, inspired by big, small, happy, sad, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, near, far and 19 more... -
Kangaroo Words 2
Kangaroo words with joey-antonyms, e.g., pest/pet
pest, friend, giant, cremate, covert, there, feast, wonderful, animosity, inattentive, electrocuted, rectitude and 54 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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A List of Mythical Proportions
All of these things exist, I swear!
unicorn, pegasus, cyclops, yeti, abominable snowman, bigfoot, phoenix, thunderbird, sea serpent, ogre, grue, troll and 138 more...
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cindywrites's Words
chiaroscuro, mollycoddle, feckless, evocative, provocative, invocation, beckon, allay, becalm, console, lull, soothe and 479 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for giant.

bilby A banknote worth one million British pounds. Explanation here. Jan 26, 2013
oroboros giANT Apr 25, 2008