leviathan
noun
Often Leviathan a sea monster.
leviathan
American
[li-vahy-uh-thuhn]
/ lɪˈvaɪ ə θən /
noun
-
leviathans
plural
-
Bible. Often Leviathan a sea monster.
-
any huge marine animal, as the whale.
-
anything of immense size and power, as a huge, oceangoing ship.
-
Leviathan, a philosophical work (1651) by Thomas Hobbes dealing with the political organization of society.
leviathan
British
/ lɪˈvaɪəθən /
noun
-
Bible a monstrous beast, esp a sea monster
-
any huge or powerful thing
Leviathan
Cultural
Discover More
Figuratively, a “leviathan” is any enormous beast.
Leviathan is a work on politics by the seventeenth-century English author Thomas Hobbes.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of leviathan
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English levyathan, from Late Latin leviathan, ultimately from Hebrew liwyāthān
Explanation
A leviathan is a giant sea creature. It can be real, like a whale, or mythical. Moby Dick is an example of a famous leviathan. The word comes from Hebrew livyathan which means a great sea serpent or sea monster. A real leviathan is the giant sea squid Architeuthis, which was photographed alive for the first time in 2005. A leviathan can also be something that is really, really big. The Titanic was a leviathan that now rests with leviathans.
Vocabulary lists containing leviathan
Lord of the Flies
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Rap Lyrics
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Refugee
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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:
It expanded into a $1.8 trillion leviathan through a series of big-ticket mergers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 6, 2025
A stiff primary challenge from the liberal leviathan, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 29, 2024
But — and this is one leviathan of a “but” — something else is starting to emerge in the polling.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 9, 2024
What an extraordinary signing the Japanese leviathan has been, what a goals haul, what joy he has sparked among the Celtic support.
From BBC ● Apr. 8, 2023
Then I saw a long shadow pass underneath me—a leviathan somehow lit from beneath—and I gulped.
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
Israel has halted production at its Karish and Leviathan fields, which will affect exports to Egypt and Jordan.
From Barron's ● Mar. 3, 2026
The new deal is for 130 billion cubic meters of gas, and will see Israel supplying Egypt until 2040, said NewMed Energy, an Israeli company holding a major stake in Israel’s Leviathan gas field.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 18, 2025
"You can have robots starting at the bow and the stern, and two points in the middle, and working towards each other," says Bryce Lawrence, operations director at Leviathan.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2023
“Don’t expect anything from Leviathan — there’s no point in appealing, either,” Chen Min, a former journalist better known by his pen name, Xiao Shu, wrote on his WeChat timeline, referring to the central government.
From New York Times ● Dec. 26, 2022
Lord Quellon, White Widow, Lamentation, Woe, Leviathan, Iron Lady, Reapers Wind, and War- hammer, with six more ships behind, two of them storm- wracked and under tow.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
Dinios Kol of the Khanum Empire’s justice department is summoned to investigate the murder of a treasury officer in Yarrowdale, where the dead bodies of leviathans are processed into the components of powerful magic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
In his 1851 novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville describes right whales as “the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man.”
From National Geographic ● Jan. 25, 2024
Hogan’s team hopes to use that breather to fill in vital details about the Mekong’s lengthy list of leviathans.
From Science Magazine ● May 30, 2023
Though these leviathans are often loners, they can live for more than 200 years, making their longevity more than double that of more social species such as sperm and humpback whales.
From Scientific American ● Jan. 31, 2023
But such leviathans appeared only late in antiquity, and were exceptional.
From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro
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.
