Pantagruel

American  

[pan-tag-roo-el, -uhl, pan-tuh-groo-uhl, pahn-ta-gry-el] / pænˈtæg ruˌɛl, -əl, ˌpæn təˈgru əl, pɑ̃ ta grüˈɛl /

noun

1. (in Rabelais'Pantagruel ) the huge son of Gargantua, represented as dealing with serious matters in a spirit of broad and somewhat cynical good humor.

2. (italics) a satirical novel (1532) by Rabelais.

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Pantagruel British  

/ pænˈtæɡruːɛl /

noun

1. a gigantic prince, noted for his ironical buffoonery, in Rabelais' satire Gargantua and Pantagruel (1534)

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Other Word Forms

• Pantagruelian adjective
• Pantagruelically adverb
• Pantagruelism noun
• Pantagruelist noun

Example Sentences

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

Surely Don Quixote or Moby Dick or Gargantua and Pantagruel would all be classed as postmodern novels, but they were written in the 17th, 19th and 16th centuries respectively – so what’s going on there?

From Salon • Aug. 20, 2012

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

In 1552, in a list of fantastical desserts in Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, we find hard written evidence that the word macaron meant a dessert.

From Slate • Nov. 16, 2011

Simple and unpretending as they are in form, the fabliaux announce not merely the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles and the Heptameron, L’Avocat Patelin, and Pantagruel, but also L’Avare and the Roman comique, Gil Blas and Candide.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 2 "French Literature" to "Frost, William" by Various