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Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua, the second part of a five-volume series about the giant and his son Pantagruel. All of the details of Gargantua's life befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that it fells the entire forest of Orleans. He has an enormous appetite, such that in one incident he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua led to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used for anything of tremendous size or volume.
Synonyms
- astronomical
- astronomic
- Brobdingnagian
- bumper
- colossal
- cosmic
- cosmical
- cyclopean
- elephantine
- enormous
- galactic
- giant
- gigantesque
- gigantic
- grand
- herculean
- heroic
- heroical
- Himalayan
- huge
- humongous
- humungous
- immense
- jumbo
- king-size
- king-sized
- leviathan
- mammoth
- massive
- mega
- mighty
- monster
- monstrous
- monumental
- mountainous
- oceanic
- pharaonic
- planetary
- prodigious
- super
- super-duper
- supersize
- supersized
- titanic
- tremendous
- vast
- vasty
- walloping
- whacking
- whopping
Examples of gargantuan in a Sentence
Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 8 June 2024
Initially negotiated in 2018, the gargantuan bonus is based on Tesla having achieved certain milestones under Musk's leadership, and would nearly double his equity share in the company from 13% to 22% — if, that is, it's approved next week.
—Rafi Schwartz, theweek, 7 June 2024
On Earth there are telescopes far larger: the Very Large Telescope in Chile has an 8.2-meter mirror, and the twin Keck Telescopes in Hawaii are each a gargantuan 10 meters wide.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 23 Nov. 2023
The gospel of the Catalog endures in the Valley’s gargantuan office complexes but now provides a techno-utopian gloss for an especially relentless variant of modern corporate capitalism.
—Margaret O’Mara, Foreign Affairs, 1 Nov. 2022
See all Example Sentences for gargantuan 
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Cite this Entry
“Gargantuan.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gargantuan. Accessed 16 Jun. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
gargantuan
adjective
from Gargantua, a giant with an enormous appetite in books by the French author François Rabelais
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