gargantuan

adjective

gar·​gan·​tuan gär-ˈgan(t)-sh(ə-)wən 

variants often Gargantuan

: tremendous in size, volume, or degree : gigantic, colossal

gargantuan waterfalls

Did you know?

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 of gargantuan

• gigantic
• huge
• enormous
• giant
• vast
• massive
• colossal
• tremendous
• mammoth
• immense
• monumental
• astronomical
• monstrous
• titanic

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

An instructive case is the fate of the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, a unique and gargantuan store of 75,000 artworks, mostly consisting of books and paper, based on words and typography that was the life’s work of a Miami couple, Ruth and Marvin Sackner. —Andres Viglucci, Miami Herald, 30 Nov. 2025

Also known as Rapa Nui, the remote island is famed for the gargantuan sculptures that look out over the Pacific Ocean, but its inhabitants never erected what would have been the community’s largest statue. —Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 26 Nov. 2025

Remember Season 4’s gargantuan closing episode, which clocked in at 2 hours and 19 minutes and set the stage for one final face off against Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower)? —Cnn.com Wire Service, Mercury News, 26 Nov. 2025

Given the gargantuan orders, Simon & Schuster agreed, in case of low sales, to take back unsold copies from bookstores—the first instance of a publisher allowing returns. —Literary Hub, 25 Nov. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Gargantua

First Known Use

1596, in the meaning defined above

Podcast

Get Word of the Day delivered to your inbox!

Kids Definition

gargantuan

adjective

gar·​gan·​tuan gär-ˈganch-wən 

-ə-wən

: extraordinary in size, degree, or volume : gigantic

Etymology

from Gargantua, a giant with an enormous appetite in books by the French author François Rabelais