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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 of gargantuan
Examples of gargantuan in a Sentence
Jim Root, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2026
Coordinating medical care at the Olympics is a gargantuan task that begins well before the Games begin.
—Sara Germano, Sportico.com, 13 Feb. 2026
There’s a romantic film positively gargantuan in scope that inspired hundreds of thousands of obsessives, but these two films could have aligned in being love stories about complete weirdos.
—Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 12 Feb. 2026
The department has said hundreds of lawyers have pored over the documents to look for survivors' names — a gargantuan task given the sheer number of records.
—Jacob Rosen, CBS News, 11 Feb. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Gargantuan.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gargantuan. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.
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gargantuan
adjective
from Gargantua, a giant with an enormous appetite in books by the French author François Rabelais
