leviathan

noun

le·​vi·​a·​than li-ˈvī-ə-thən 

1

a

often Leviathan : a sea monster defeated by Yahweh in various scriptural accounts

b

: a large sea animal

This leviathan of animals is the great Blue Whale.

—Weston LaBarre

2

Leviathan : the political state

especially : a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy

3

: something large or formidable

that leviathan of international corporations

leviathan adjective

Did you know?

Old Testament references to a huge sea monster, Leviathan (in Hebrew, Liwyāthān), are thought to have been inspired by an ancient myth in which the god Baal slays a multiheaded sea monster. Leviathan appears in the Book of Psalms as a sea serpent that is killed by God and then given as food to creatures in the wilderness, and it is mentioned in the Book of Job as well. After making a splash in English in the 1300s, the word Leviathan began to be used, capitalized and uncapitalized, for enormous sea creatures both imagined and real—including as a synonym of whale over 100 times in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, as in “ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan.” Today, leviathan can be used for anything large and powerful, from ships to corporations.

Synonyms of leviathan

• whale
• giant
• monster
• dinosaur
• mammoth

Examples of leviathan in a Sentence

The factory is a towering leviathan in the middle of the town.

a leviathan of the seas, that cruise ship is said to be the largest passenger vessel afloat

Recent Examples on the Web

Conservatives have talked for years about the need to downsize the federal leviathan. — Arkansas Online, 13 Oct. 2026

Cornelis van Zuilen has created a stunning cosmic mosaic of all 110 galaxies, star clusters and nebulas of the Messier catalog — a leviathan effort that took hundreds of hours and many nights of sleeping in his car to complete. — Anthony Wood, Space.com, 11 Oct. 2026

On every other dimension, however, the Cuban state is weaker than most foreign observers realize—both those on the right, who imagine an anti-American leviathan, and those on the left, who cling to the fiction of functional schools and hospitals. — Will Freeman, Foreign Affairs, 17 Sep. 2026

Former Amazon employees filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday accusing the e-tail leviathan of discriminating against potentially thousands of pregnant workers by firing or retaliating against those who sought extra accommodations. — Jasmin Malik Chua, Footwear News, 9 Sep. 2026

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, from Late Latin, from Hebrew liwyāthān

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

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Kids Definition

leviathan

noun

le·​vi·​a·​than li-ˈvī-ə-thən 

1

often capitalized : a sea monster often standing for evil in the Old Testament and Christian literature

2

: something very large or powerful of its kind