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Gargantua

American  
[gahr-gan-choo-uh] / gɑrˈgæn tʃu ə /

noun

  1. an amiable giant and king, noted for his enormous capacity for food and drink, in Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.

  2. (italics) a satirical novel (1534) by Rabelais.


Gargantua British  
/ ɡɑːˈɡæntjʊə /

noun

  1. a gigantic king noted for his great capacity for food and drink, in Rabelais' satire Gargantua and Pantagruel (1534)

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Example Sentences

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In 1995, Federated, the department store chain with an appetite like Gargantua, had already taken over Macy’s.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 14, 2021

At one point, Gargantua rinses his hands in wine, picks his teeth with a pig’s trotter, spreads a green cloth over the table and embarks on an epic spree of card games.

From Washington Post Feb. 7, 2019

For the Russian avant-garde, the rectilinearity of modernism—the cube, plane, column, grid—was as much born from the book as it was the industrial Gargantua of the new machine age.

From Slate Nov. 15, 2012

Surely Don Quixote or Moby Dick or Gargantua and Pantagruel would all be classed as postmodern novels, but they were written in the 17th, 19th and 16th centuries respectively – so what’s going on there?

From Salon Aug. 20, 2012

In Brittany it is traceable in the legend of Gargantua; in Germany there are several variations; and in Greece it finds its counterpart in the legend of Saturn or Cronus.

From Storyology Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore by Taylor, Benjamin

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