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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.


Pantagruel British  
/ pænˈtæɡruːɛl /

noun

  1. a gigantic prince, noted for his ironical buffoonery, 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

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:

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

Eleven years however passed before the work was continued, the second book of Pantagruel not being published till 1546, and the third six years later, just before the author's death, in 1552.

From A Short History of French Literature by George Saintsbury

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