giant
Americannoun
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(in folklore) a being with human form but superhuman size, strength, etc.
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a person or thing of unusually great size, power, importance, etc.; major figure; legend.
a giant in her field; an intellectual giant.
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(often initial capital letter) any of the Gigantes.
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Mining. monitor.
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Astronomy. giant star.
adjective
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unusually large, great, or strong; gigantic; huge.
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greater or more eminent than others.
noun
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Also (feminine): giantess. a mythical figure of superhuman size and strength, esp in folklore or fairy tales
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a person or thing of exceptional size, reputation, etc
a giant in nuclear physics
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Greek myth any of the large and powerful offspring of Uranus (sky) and Gaea (earth) who rebelled against the Olympian gods but were defeated in battle
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pathol a person suffering from gigantism
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astronomy See giant star
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mining another word for monitor
adjective
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remarkably or supernaturally large
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architect another word for colossal
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of giant
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English geant, from Old French, from Latin gigant-, stem of gigās, from Greek Gígās; replacing Old English gigant, from Latin, as above
Explanation
A giant is someone that's unusually enormous. You can also use the word giant to describe something or someone that is really big. That giant green guy over there? That's the jolly green giant. Ho ho ho. A star basketball player might be described as a giant, or a stunningly tall redwood tree, or even a very large business. These giants come from the giants of mythology, huge creatures that are featured in fairy and folk tales and inspired by the giants of Greek myth, who were a separate race of strong, aggressive gods. The Greek root is Gigas, with the plural form Gigantes.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
US startup Brain Technologies launched an agentic "Natural AI Phone" which went on sale in Japan in April in partnership with mobile giant SoftBank Corp.
From Barron's ● Jul. 19, 2026
It takes place within an open-air arena which not only resembles a giant bird nest but is also actually being used as one - swallows moved into the rafters within days of its completion.
From BBC ● Jul. 19, 2026
There, the vessels carrying Iranian oil use giant hoses to transfer it at sea to other oil tankers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
WSJ’s David Wainer explains why the latest quarterly earnings from insurance giant UnitedHealthcare and hospital chain HCA signal a substantial shift in the healthcare space.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
Mard piled dry grass on the ground for me and then covered me with giant leaves that had soft fuzz on them, so they were quite cozy.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
That growth pales in comparison with Apple, Alphabet and other tech giants.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
Nvidia was the darling of Wall Street for the past year as chip scarcity drove an unprecedented premium on hardware and tech giants scrambled for its products.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
Heavily backed by domestic tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, Moonshot has quickly risen to the forefront of China's generative AI ecosystem.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
Also lifting sentiment were banking giants JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo all reporting higher profits in the unofficial kickoff to second-quarter earnings season.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
In fact, for all their size, diprotodons and Australia’s other giants probably wouldn’t have been that hard to hunt because they would have been taken totally by surprise by their two-legged assailants.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
