Gargantuan

 WORD OF THE DAY

gargantuan / adjective / gahr-GAN-chuh-wuhn

Definition
1: tremendous in size, volume, or degree
2: gigantic, colossal

Examples
"We rode a horse-drawn carriage up to the gargantuan Grand Hotel, still embracing its luxury 1887 roots. After a tour of the quirkily colored suites, we settled in for a lunch of local smoked whitefish in the airy restaurant."
— Simon Peter Groebner, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 14 Aug. 2022

The Space Launch System rocket is the most powerful ever built for NASA, a gargantuan booster that will generate 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, enough to propel Orion crew ships into lunar orbit.
— William Harwood, CBS News, 24 Sep. 2022

Did You Know?
Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua, the second part of a five-volume series about the giant and his son Pantagruel.
All of the details of Gargantua's life befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that it fells the entire forest of Orleans.
He has an enormous appetite, such that in one incident he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua led to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used for anything of tremendous size or volume.