Definition of GARGANTUAN

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Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua. 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 - in one memorable incident, he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua gave rise to the adjective "gargantuan," which since Shakespeare's time has been used of anything of tremendous size or volume.

Examples of gargantuan in a Sentence

a creature of gargantuan proportions people seem to be buying ever more gargantuan SUVs these days

Recent Examples on the Web

This broad category runs the gamut from tiny subcompact crossovers to gargantuan full-size SUVs. — Kirk Seaman, Car and Driver, "2019 Editors' Choice Awards: The Best Trucks, SUVs, and Vans," 24 Jan. 2019 Change Is Coming About an hour’s drive from Dhahran, a gargantuan industrial complex dominates the desert landscape. — Stanley Reed, New York Times, "An Oil Giant Is Taking Big Steps. Saudi Arabia Can’t Afford for It to Slip.," 16 June 2018 Many farmers plowed the proceeds into market-tracking technology, gargantuan steel bins to bank more crops and trucks to move them. — Jacob Bunge, WSJ, "Firms That Bossed Agriculture for a Century Face New Threat: Farmers," 15 Aug. 2018 The five houses on the site were custom built by Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. of Colorado Springs, Colo., and range from 181 square feet to a comparatively gargantuan 309 square feet. — Katheleen Conti, BostonGlobe.com, "Tiny home village offers fun-sized travel experience," 4 June 2018 It was found in the Big Cypress National Preserve with 73 developing eggs inside of its belly, a foreboding sign of the gargantuan offspring set to roam the park. — Sam Blum, Popular Mechanics, "Researchers Capture the Biggest Snake Ever Found in the Florida Everglades," 8 Apr. 2019 Airbus' flagship plane is primed for a similar fate as another gargantuan aviation legend: the Boeing 747. — Sam Blum, Popular Mechanics, "Airbus to Stop Production of the Colossal A380 as Airlines Transition to Smaller Planes," 14 Feb. 2019 So far, officials are signaling that stimulus measures will be focused more on consumer tax cuts and fiscal support for infrastructure, rather than another gargantuan credit splurge that would pressure the yuan. — Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, "China’s Yuan Plays Fed, Trump Roulette," 11 Jan. 2019 Other monuments, such as a gargantuan pair of crossed swords — held by hands modeled after those of Saddam — that loom above Grand Festivities Square or the 673-foot Baghdad TV tower, have also faded. — Nabih Bulos, The Seattle Times, "Baghdad, once a jewel among Arab capitals, is barely functional," 28 Jan. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'gargantuan.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.