gargantuan

comparative more gargantuan · superlative most gargantuan · alternative Gargantuan

1. Huge; immense; tremendous.

   Boxy and unrefined, the Hummer embodied an outlandishly masculine aesthetic that seemed to almost revel in its gargantuan fuel consumption.

   2022 April 7, Oliver Milman, “I test-drove the all-electric Hummer. Can it win over America’s EV skeptics?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

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   Some distant observers of the Scottish football scene reckon that all - all! - Gerrard has to do is beat Celtic to become a legend. Even if that was true - and, demonstrably, it is not - then it would be a gargantuan task all on its own.

   2018 May 4, Tom English, “Steven Gerrard: A 'seriously clever or recklessly stupid' Rangers appointment”, in BBC Sport

   Or the twinkling dining rooms: all frilly net curtains, pink walls, kaleidoscope-patterned carpets and tiny tables, crammed with teetering piles of hand-painted ceramic crockery (think plates covered in colorful swirls and cocktail mugs shaped like heaving bosoms or ladies’ faces) that showcase gargantuan portions of Italian fare.

   2019 September 14, Elizabeth Paton, “A Fashion/Food Blowout in the Shadow of Brexit”, in New York Times

   Synonyms: colossal, enormous, giant, huge, humongous, immense, ample, big

2. obsoleteOf the giant Gargantua or his appetite.

comparative more Gargantuan · superlative most Gargantuan

1. Alternative letter-case form of gargantuan.

   Magnified to Gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting.

   1896 July 15, “Notes”, in The Chap-Book, volume V, number 5, H. S. Stone & Company, page 240

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   The delectableſt luſtie ſight and mouingeſt obiect, me thought it was that our Ile ſets forth, and nothing behinde in number with the inuincible Spaniſh Armada, though they were not ſuch Gargantuan boyſterous gulliguts as they, though ſhips and galeaſſes they would haue beene reckoned in the nauy of K. Edgar, who is chronicled & regiſtred with three thouſand ſhips of warre to haue ſcoured the narrow ſeas, and ſailed round about England euery Summer.

   1599, [Thomas] Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, […], London: […] [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and C[uthbert] B[urby] […], →OCLC, page 5

   Though a list of the great writers contain all the constituents of an Epicurean feast, yet to most of us it resembles the menu of a Gargantuan banquet.

   1920, P[hilip] B[ertram] M[urray] Allan, “Books Which Form the Library”, in The Book-Hunter at Home, London: Philip Allan and Co., page 88

   Wyndham Lewis is equipped for his task with an amazing vocabulary of diatribe and derision, a spleenful of gall, and sense for the absurd—the monstrous, the Gargantuan, the preposterously incongruous—which, when disciplined, makes his best passages uproariously effective.[…]with a Gargantuan art unexampled in our time.

   1932, The New York Times Book Review, pages 2 and 26

   The telecommunications giant hopes that this write-off, which contributed to its Gargantuan $1.8 billion third-quarter loss, will clear the way for a steady stream of future earnings.

   1991 November 4, R.F. Black, S. Dentzer, “Bush’s October Surprise”, in U.S. News & World Report, volume 111, number 19

   Two East German Trabant cars attached to huge mechanical arms and outfitted with spotlights scan the crowd like alien prison sentries while a patchwork video quilt of Gargantuan screens, multi-image Vidiwalls and TV monitors spews words and pictures with exhausting velocity — Rock & Roll Mission Control running on amphetamine fast forward.

   1992 October 1, David Fricke, “U2 Finds What It’s Looking For”, in Rolling Stone