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MARVELLOUS
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Too improbable to admit of belief
Example:
a tall story
Synonyms:
improbable; marvellous; marvelous; tall
Classified under:
Similar:
incredible; unbelievable (beyond belief or understanding)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Being or having the character of a miracle
Synonyms:
marvellous; marvelous; miraculous
Classified under:
Similar:
supernatural (not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material)
Derivation:
marvel (something that causes feelings of wonder)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Extraordinarily good or great; used especially as intensifiers
Example:
a tremendous achievement
Synonyms:
fantastic; grand; howling; marvellous; marvelous; rattling; terrific; tremendous; wonderful; wondrous
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
extraordinary (beyond what is ordinary or usual; highly unusual or exceptional or remarkable)
Context examples:
When he heard such words dropping carelessly from the lips of the members of this marvellous family, her family, he thrilled with delight.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
“By George, it’s marvellous!” cried Hopkins, in an ecstasy of admiration.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I had often looked upon the mighty arms and neck of the smith, but I had never before seen him stripped to the waist, or understood the marvellous symmetry of development which had made him in his youth the favourite model of the London sculptors.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I am practically industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour—but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
At this signal, the little elephant, with a dexterity that was next to marvellous in so small an animal, whisked the chair round with Mr. Omer in it, and rattled it off, pell-mell, into the parlour, without touching the door-post: Mr. Omer indescribably enjoying the performance, and looking back at me on the road as if it were the triumphant issue of his life's exertions.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down on his knees before so marvellous a mind.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The manner in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and, whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in the last extremity.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
You are a sheer dogmatist, and that's what makes it so marvellous.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He sailed with skill, stopping way on the boat without exciting the notice of the wranglers, and mentally forgiving his hardest voyages in that they had made this marvellous night possible, giving him mastery over sea and boat and wind so that he could sail with her beside him, her dear weight against him on his shoulder.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
