gargantuan

[gahr-gan-choo-uhn]

adjective

1. gigantic; enormous; colossal.

   a gargantuan task.

   Synonyms: elephantine, vast, immense, mammoth, huge

gargantuan

/ ɡɑːˈɡæntjʊən /

adjective

1. (sometimes capital) huge; enormous

Usage

Some people think that gargantuan should only be used to describe things connected with food: a gargantuan meal ; his gargantuan appetite

Word History and Origins

Origin of gargantuan¹

First recorded in 1585–95; Gargantu(a) + -an

Example Sentences

I watch as a gargantuan sea monster breaks from the water, gives a squealing cry, and submerges once more.

Read more on Literature

He said the whale's skull was a "gargantuan reminder of what we can do to improve the marine environment".

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At the same time, these projections assume a gargantuan market for AI-powered products and services.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Those gargantuan losses have been cut to a manageable size.

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In a $600 million fund that was meant to be picking stocks, his bet was already gargantuan; but if he could raise the money explicitly for this new purpose, he could do many billions more.

Read more on Literature

Related Words

• colossal 
• enormous 
• gigantic 
• huge 
• humongous 
• immense 
• mammoth 
• massive 
• monstrous 
• monumental 
• prodigious 
• towering 
• tremendous 
• vast 

When To Use

What does gargantuan mean?

Gargantuan means extraordinarily large or huge. Some things are more than huge—they’re gargantuan.The word is commonly applied to physical objects whose size makes you marvel with awe. Blue whales are gargantuan. Skyscrapers are gargantuan. The Grand Canyon is gargantuan.But it can also be applied to intangible things, as in With all the champagne and caviar that we ordered, the bill for dinner is going to be gargantuan. It is especially associated with things involving food, such as a gargantuan appetite or a gargantuan meal.Similar adjectives are gigantic, giant, colossal, and mammoth. A more formal synonym is massive. More informal synonyms are humongous and ginormous.Something might be considered gargantuan only in comparison to other similar things. For example, an unusually large grapefruit might be described as gargantuan even though it’s not all that big in general—it’s simply gargantuan compared to normal-sized grapefruits. Still, it’s usually used to describe things that are objectively huge, like redwood trees or the planet Jupiter.Gargantuan is sometimes casually used to mean extremely important or significant—much like the figurative use of big and huge. Sometimes, this is negative, as in gargantuan error or gargantuan failure.Example: You don’t realize how gargantuan the sun is until you see an image of a planet next to it for scale.