Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of astounding force, volume, degree, or excellence; marvelous.
- adj. Amazingly large or great; huge. See Synonyms at enormous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Causing stupor or astonishment; astounding; amazing; specifically, astonishing from greatness in extent or degree; of wonderful magnitude; immense; prodigious: as, a stupendous work of nature or art; a stupendous blunder.
Wiktionary
- adj. Astonishingly great or large; huge; enormous.
- adj. Of stunning volume, degree, or excellence; marvelous.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Astonishing; wonderful; amazing; especially, astonishing in magnitude or elevation.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. so great in size or force or extent as to elicit awe
Etymologies
- First attested from 1547, from Late Latin stupendus ("stunning, amazing"), from Latin stupere ("to be stunned"). See also stupid. (Wiktionary)
- From Late Latin stupendus, stunning, gerundive of Latin stupēre, to be stunned. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“So stupendous is the potential, it could transform global energy politics and economics.”
“Giap was a fine general but he had great troops willing and apparently eager to sustain stupendous hardships for long long periods, and a country behind him in which every citizen worked in essence 12 hours a day 7 days a week for 25 years, for no pay.”
“And equally stupendous is the callousness of the people who believe in Christ, acknowledge”
“His poll numbers in the role have gone from being "stupendous" -- the description of one of his Labor opponents -- to just "very good".”
“I've been a guest at a few of these and they are plain stupendous.”
“Ceylon, of the remains of what may correctly be termed stupendous works; and the date of the construction of which, as regards India, is in many cases prehistoric.”
“Efforts which might fairly be described as stupendous were put forth by the advocates of Kultur to win, if not the approval, at least the strict neutrality of”
“When I passed by there this afternoon," said Corliss, "it recalled a stupendous conflict we had, once upon a time; but I couldn't remember the cause.”
“The philosophical mind would most naturally associate with it the idea of stupendous magnetic power.”
“They may call stupendous mountains and grand rivers by the names of Smith and Jones, of Fremont and Stansbury; but men who think justly, and even the rude but wronged trappers themselves, will laugh to scorn such _scientific coxcombry_.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘stupendous’.
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avfordomd's list
lexicon
copacetic, amiable, philanthropic, misanthropic, gregarious, vehement, parcel, congregate, paucity, passel, multitudinous, pulchritudinous and 98 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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terrific
tremendous, howling, rattling, radical, gorgon, awe(ful)some, pitch Seaver, wow, ohwowho, remarkedable, terrifical, stupendous and 8 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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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3063 more... -
Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 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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Daily encountered words
Words encountered on daily basis while reading blogs,newspapers,magazines and books.
Euphemism, penny-pinching, thrift, frugal, fanciful, convoluted, copious, bogus, corroborate, debunk, diffident, exacting and 63 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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Words grabbed from real life conversa...
If I've seen it, heard it, or marvelled at it, I'll stick it here.
cruft, ermine, redundant, shakespearean, camino, marvelous, stupendous, chagrin, shaven, sleek, smug, stillness and 325 more...
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Resounding Words
great timbre
sone, sonata, resound, sonorous, consonant, unison, sonic, swan, sonant, sonnet, dissonance, scraunch and 142 more...
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NeoVolt's Words
schadenfreude, serendipity, idiosyncrasy, loess, caducous, vagary, schematic, steeple, licentious, tangential, verisimilitude, vernacular and 385 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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Tunguska
stupendous, tremendous, immense, solicitous, crust, seismometer, explosion, impact, supersonic, sonic boom, boisterous, bituminous and 13 more...
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My List
A list of words that I have generated over time.
cairn, cacodaemoniacal, abash, abject, abjure, abstemious, abhor, abnegate, abnegation, abscond, abstruse, acclivity and 702 more...
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advanced adj
stupendous, cordially, gracious, wayward, promiscuous, explicit, malevolent
Tweets
Looking for tweets for stupendous.
reesetee How about solipedous, schizopodous, rhizopodous, nefandous, ligniperdous...there are lots more! Nov 17, 2007
oroboros I'm told that the words hazardous, horrendous, stupendous and tremendous are the only four words that end in 'dous' in the English language. Come on, Wordies, let's prove 'em wrong! Oct 4, 2007