humongous

American  

[hyoo-muhng-guhs, -mong-, yoo-] / hyuˈmʌŋ gəs, -ˈmɒŋ-, yu- /

or, often, humungous

adjective

Slang.

1. extraordinarily large.

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humongous British  

/ ˌhjuːˈmʌŋɡəs /

adjective

1. exceptionally large; huge

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Usage

What does humongous mean? Humongous is an informal way of saying extraordinarily large or huge. Some things are more than huge—they’re humongous. A similarly informal synonym is ginormous. Other synonyms include gigantic, enormous, gargantuan, colossal, and mammoth. The word is most often applied to physical objects whose size makes you marvel with awe. Blue whales are humongous. Skyscrapers are humongous. The Grand Canyon is humongous. 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 humongous. Like any adjective used to describe something’s size, humongous is often used in a way that’s relative to the situation. Many things described as humongous are objectively huge, like redwood trees or the planet Jupiter. But something might be considered humongous only in comparison to other similar things. For example, an unusually large grapefruit might be described as humongous even though it’s not all that big in general—it’s simply humongous compared to normal-sized grapefruits. Humongous is sometimes casually used to mean extremely important or significant—much like the figurative use of big and huge, as in This is a humongous win for the franchise. Sometimes, this is negative, as in humongous error, humongous failure, or humongous misunderstanding. Because it’s so informal, it’s unlikely to be used in very serious situations. Example: You don’t realize how humongous the sun is until you see an image of a planet next to it for scale.

Etymology

Origin of humongous

First recorded in 1965–70; expressive coinage, perhaps reflecting huge and monstrous with stress pattern of tremendous

Explanation

Something humongous is really, really big. If you experiment with greenhouses, fertilization, and grow lights, you can grow a humongous pumpkin. Humongous is an American slang word coined in the 1970s, copying more proper words like tremendous or enormous. If you want to describe something that's so big it's hard to really measure, like the national debt or the number of cells in your body, you can use the word humongous. Just don't use it in a formal paper.

Example Sentences

And then when you want to sell it, you’ve got to pay commissions and the humongous transfer taxes.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 27, 2025

She remains recumbent for an entire number, singing to a skeleton, before the bones around her reveal themselves as dancers in masks, convulsing to the humongous bassline synths of “Disease.”

From Salon • Apr. 16, 2025

I’m from DOJ and I spent a lot of time there so take this with a grain of salt, but this is humongous in DOJ’s history.

From Slate • Feb. 14, 2025

"Kylian is a wonderful player but the pressure is humongous," said Bellingham.

From BBC • Nov. 27, 2024

The food was brought out on humongous plates.

From "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah

Related Words

• colossal
• elephantine
• enormous
• gargantuan
• ginormous
• humungous
• immense