Word of the Day
: January 4, 2026titanic
playWhat It Means
Something described as titanic is very great in size, force, or power.
// The batter saved the game in the bottom of the ninth inning by hitting a titanic home run right out of the park.
titanic in Context
“Absurdly, though, if you were standing on a Rodinian beach [on the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia] you might not have even noticed the seas rising at all. This is because, as the land bounced back from underneath the weight of the now-vanished ice sheets, and the gravitational pull of these titanic ice sheets on the oceans disappeared, the seas might have appeared to some Rodinian beachgoers to instead retreat from the coast, and even drop by over three hundred feet—despite the unthinkable rise in sea level globally.” — Peter Brannan, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World, 2025
Did You Know?
Before becoming the name of the most famous ship in history, titanic described that which resembled or was related to the Titans, the family of giant gods and goddesses in Greek mythology who were believed to have once ruled the earth. They were subsequently overpowered and replaced by the younger Olympian gods under the leadership of Zeus. The size and power of the Titans is memorialized in the adjective titanic and in the noun titanium, a chemical element of exceptional strength that is used especially in the production of steel.
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Podcast
More Words of the Day
-
Jan 03
senescence
-
Jan 02
febrile
-
Jan 01
amortize
-
Dec 31
retrospective
-
Dec 30
charisma
-
Dec 29
nefarious
