Vast

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /vɑːst/

Definitions

1. Extremely large in size, amount, or extent
2. Enormous in scale, degree, or area, often implying an immense or boundless quality
3. Significantly extensive or immense in size, range, or capacity, typically overwhelming in nature

Etymology: Latin "vastus" meant "void" or "immense," and the two senses were never far apart. An empty space is large, and a great emptiness is what a vast place feels like. The Latin word passed into Middle French as "vaste," and English borrowed it from there, so the adjective we use for a desert or a galaxy began as a description of something hollow and unfilled. That emptiness sense survives in the family of words around it. "Waste" comes from the same Latin root, and it once carried the same idea of desolate, uninhabited ground before it came to mean discarded material. German "Wüste," meaning desert, belongs to the same group, so the connection runs from wastelands to wilderness to sheer size.

Synonyms: immense, enormous, huge, expansive, limitless

Antonyms: small, tiny, limited, narrow, restricted