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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.

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

"Pantagruel" by a more delicate application of the test becomes a finer work than "Don Quixote," and in the exposition of this dictum we come upon one of the mountain peaks of Machen's amazing philosophy.

From Arthur Machen A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin by Starrett, Vincent

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