Colossal

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /kəˈlɒsəl/

Definitions

1. Of immense size or extent; extraordinarily large or impressive in scale or magnitude
2. Enormously large or impressive in size, often causing a sense of wonder or admiration due to its vastness and significant impact
3. Extremely vast in dimension or quantity, suggesting something unusually large beyond typical proportions

Etymology: Ancient Greek sculptors gave us this word's core idea: "kolossós" meant a giant statue, and the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze figure of the sun god Helios that stood at the harbour entrance, became the most famous example. The Romans borrowed the term as "colossus," and it spread through the rest of Europe as a name for anything enormous, not just statues. English took the word through French. "Colossal" is a French formation, built from Latin "colossus" with the adjectival suffix "-al," which came into French through Old French and Middle French. It carries the sense of being of colossal size, so the word was shaped as a description of the statue's scale before it ever described ordinary objects.

Synonyms: gigantic, huge, enormous, massive, immense

Antonyms: tiny, small, petite, microscopic, insignificant