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Synonyms

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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Mustafa Kocyigit, who runs the Gargantua bookshop in Izmir, said the success of Nolan's film has revived interest in Homer and boosted sales of the poem "The Odyssey".

From Barron's Aug. 17, 2026

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

All these initial chapters of “Monkey King” exhibit a rollicking exuberance, somewhat like Rabelais’s hyperbolic accounts of the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel.

From Washington Post Mar. 3, 2021

Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes's Don Quixote, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Melville's Moby-Dick and Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time – these works spoke paradoxically directly to me in their very sense of indirection.

From The Guardian Aug. 3, 2012

The great literary work of Rabelais is embodied in a series of chronicles, the first of which is called "Gargantua" and the second, "Pantagruel."

From History of Education by Levi Seeley

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