enormous
/ɪˈnɔːməs
/adjective
Very large in size, quantity, or extent: enormous sums of money the possibilities are enormous...
- Children have been able to get a real feel for the enormous size of some of the creatures that live in the sea.
- It is costing an enormous amount of money to clean it up, which could be used on other things.
- We did manage to get an enormous amount of work done.
Synonyms
huge, vast, extensive, expansive, broad, wide;
boundless, immeasurable, limitless, infinite, cosmic, gigantic, very big, very large, great, giant, massive, colossal, mammoth, immense, tremendous, mighty, stupendous, monumental, epic, prodigious, mountainous, monstrous, titanic, towering, elephantine, king-sized, king-size, gargantuan, Herculean, Brobdingnagian, substantial;
hefty, bulky, weighty, heavy, gross
informal mega, monster, whopping, whopping great, thumping, thumping great, humongous, jumbo, hulking, bumper, astronomical, astronomic
British informal whacking, whacking great, ginormous
Derivatives
enormousness
/ noun ...- The shark battled for 40 minutes before the angler saw its enormousness.
- I'm Margaret… thinking, like you, about the enormousness of the task…
- She hadn't realized the enormousness of her responsibility.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin enormis 'unusual, huge' (see enormity) + -ous.
Enormous is from Latin enormis, from e- ‘out of’ and norma ‘pattern, standard’ (the root of norm (early 19th century), and normal (mid 17th century)). In early use it meant ‘abnormal, unusual, extraordinary’ and also ‘abnormally bad, monstrous, shocking’ as well as ‘huge’. This bad sense is still found in enormity (Late Middle English), which strictly means ‘a grave crime or sin’ or ‘the extreme seriousness of something bad’, although today people increasingly use it to mean simply ‘great size or scale’.