gargantuan

adjective

gar·​gan·​tuan gär-ˈgan(t)-sh(ə-)wən How to pronounce gargantuan (audio)
often capitalized
: tremendous in size, volume, or degree : gigantic, colossal
gargantuan waterfalls

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Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua, the second part of a five-volume series about the giant and his son Pantagruel. All of the details of Gargantua's life befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that it fells the entire forest of Orleans. He has an enormous appetite, such that in one incident he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua led to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used for anything of tremendous size or volume.

Examples of gargantuan in a Sentence

a creature of gargantuan proportions people seem to be buying ever more gargantuan SUVs these days
Recent Examples on the Web
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That’s nowhere clearer than in the climactic final confrontation between Noa and Proximus Caesar’s brute in command, an imposing gorilla named Sylva (Eka Darville), which takes place within a gargantuan armory that’s flooding quickly around them. Manuel Betancourt, Los Angeles Times, 6 Dec. 2024 The ‘blazing furnace’ The real estate mogul’s downfall was stunning for the gargantuan scale of the fraud, rattling a country which has long projected an image of authoritarian stability. Kathleen Magramo, CNN, 6 Dec. 2024 Alongside this explosion in growth has emerged a gargantuan demand for the right talent and workforce to ideate and develop these products. Dr. Sai Balasubramanian, M.d., J.d., Forbes, 5 Dec. 2024 Vertiv has benefited since the debut of the widely accessible chatbot in late Nov., 2022 as investors scoured the market for secondary winners from the buildout of large language models and gargantuan data centers. Samantha Subin, CNBC, 3 Dec. 2024 See all Example Sentences for gargantuan 

Word History

Etymology

Gargantua

First Known Use

1596, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of gargantuan was in 1596

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Dictionary Entries Near gargantuan

Cite this Entry

“Gargantuan.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gargantuan. Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.

Kids Definition

gargantuan

adjective
gar·​gan·​tuan gär-ˈganch-wən How to pronounce gargantuan (audio)
-ə-wən
: extraordinary in size, degree, or volume : gigantic
Etymology

from Gargantua, a giant with an enormous appetite in books by the French author François Rabelais

More from Merriam-Webster on gargantuan

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