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GIGANTIC
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
So exceedingly large or extensive as to suggest a giant or mammoth
Example:
a mammoth multinational corporation
Synonyms:
gigantic; mammoth
Classified under:
Similar:
big; large (above average in size or number or quantity or magnitude or extent)
Derivation:
giant (any creature of exceptional size)
giant (an unusually large enterprise)
giant (an imaginary figure of superhuman size and strength; appears in folklore and fairy tales)
giant (someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful)
giant (a very large person; impressive in size or qualities)
Context examples:
It was at once clear that a daring and gigantic robbery had been committed.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I sawed and chopped and chiselled the weathered wood till it had the appearance of having been gnawed by some gigantic mouse.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
Here and there, through the dense haze which surrounded them, there loomed out huge pinnacles and jutting boulders of rock: while high above the sea of vapor there towered up one gigantic peak, with the pink glow of the early sunshine upon its snow-capped head.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A gigantic cavity - two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall - growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier.
(Huge Cavity in Antarctic Glacier Signals Rapid Decay, NASA)
Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought.
(First Science Results from NASA’s Juno Mission, NASA)
A team of astronomers, led by Olga Cucciati of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) Bologna, have used the VIMOS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to identify a gigantic proto-supercluster of galaxies forming in the early Universe, just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang.
(Largest Galaxy Proto-Supercluster Found, ESO)
He was a man of such gigantic strength that, even with the handcuffs which Holmes had so deftly fastened upon his wrists, he would have very quickly overpowered my friend had Hopkins and I not rushed to his rescue.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Then he suddenly rolled them all into a gigantic ball and tossed them up onto the rack.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
