Colossal

How to spell colossal

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce colossal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does colossal mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely large in size, amount, or degree.

Colossal in a sentence

• The new stadium was a colossal structure that dominated the skyline.

• The company posted a colossal loss after the failed merger.

Where does colossal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin colossus, the name for an enormous statue, which Latin in turn borrowed from the Greek kolossos. The Greek word originally referred to any larger-than-life image of a god or person, and it became famous through the Colossus of Rhodes, the giant bronze statue of the sun god Helios counted among the wonders of the ancient world. By adding the adjective ending -al, English shaped colossal to mean 'resembling such a statue', that is, gigantic in size. It entered English in the 1700s, partly through French colossal, and quickly broadened from describing physical bulk to describing anything vast, whether a debt, a mistake, or an achievement. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the root keeps a single l but a double s, the reverse of what many writers expect.

How the word is built

• coloss- (from Latin colossus: a giant statue)
• -al (adjective suffix: of or like)