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

After the gargantuan task of playing a six-hour and 39-minute baseball game, it was almost expected that the Dodgers would be somewhat hampered, but the Toronto Blue Jays not only had the same circumstances, but handily won Game 4. —Gabe Smallson, MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Oct. 2025

New blueprint for investing success The Navan exit, while uniquely gargantuan, isn’t a one-off for Zeev. —Michal Lev-Ram, Cnbc Contributor, CNBC, 30 Oct. 2025

By the late 1870s, he was asked to take part in the gargantuan task of evaluating and cataloguing the results of the five-year Challenger expedition—an ambitious British global research voyage, the first ever dedicated purely to science. —Literary Hub, 28 Oct. 2025

Then Addison Barger set off seismometers across southern Ontario with a gargantuan grand slam to push Toronto up 9-2. —Fabian Ardaya, New York Times, 25 Oct. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Gargantua

First Known Use

1596, in the meaning defined above

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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