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
- From Late Latin stupendus, stunning, gerundive of Latin stupēre, to be stunned.
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 52 more...
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advanced adj
stupendous, cordially, gracious, wayward, promiscuous, explicit, malevolent
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