Prodigiousness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of being extraordinarily impressive, remarkable, or astonishing in scale, ability, or achievement
2. The state or characteristic of being so impressively large, powerful, or skillful as to inspire wonder and amazement
3. The quality of possessing extraordinary magnitude, capability, or impressiveness that exceeds normal expectations and provokes astonishment

Etymology: Prodigiousness is a plain English formation: the adjective "prodigious" with the suffix "-ness" added to turn a quality into a noun. The adjective itself has a more surprising history. It descends from Latin "prodigiosus", meaning full of omens, marvels or portents, and that in turn comes from "prodigium", a sign sent by the gods, usually a bad one. A prodigy was originally an omen, not a talented child, and "prodigious" carried that sense of something uncanny and unnatural before it came to mean merely huge or astonishing. The adjective reached English in the Middle English period, borrowed through Latin, and it kept its heavy, awe-inspiring weight. The Latin roots sit underneath the Germanic-derived suffix, so the noun blends a learned Latin stem with a native English ending.

Synonyms: remarkability, extraordinariness, wonderfulness, exceptionality, strangeness

Antonyms: ordinariness, commonness, mediocrity, usualness, normality