Brobdingnagian

adjective

Brob·ding·nag·ian ˌbräb-diŋ-ˈna-gē-ən

-dig-ˈna-

Synonyms of Brobdingnagian next

: marked by tremendous size

Brobdingnagian noun

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Brobdingnagian Comes From Gulliver's Travels

In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, Brobdingnag is the name of a land that is populated by a race of human giants "as tall as an ordinary spire steeple." In Gulliver's first close-up encounter with the giants, he is attempting to get past a stile of which every step is six feet high when a group of field-workers approach with strides ten yards long and reaping hooks as large as six scythes. Their voices he at first mistakes for thunder. Swift's book fired the imagination of the public and within two years of the 1726 publication of the story, people had begun using Brobdingnagian to refer to anything of unusually large size. (Swift himself had used Brobdingnagian as a noun to refer to the inhabitants of Brobdingnag.)

Example Sentences

a Brobdingnagian billboard stood at the entrance to the theme park

Recent Examples on the Web Two decades ago, the Giant Magellan was one of three efforts hatched by competing groups of astronomers and institutions to create a new generation of Brobdingnagian telescopes unparalleled in the ability to gather starlight and pierce the voids of the night sky. —

Dennis Overbye Marcos Zegers, New York Times, 18 Apr. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Brobdingnagian.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.