Gigantic

How to spell gigantic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce gigantic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gigantic mean?

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

Gigantic in a sentence

• The warehouse stored a gigantic stack of unsold furniture.

• The merger created a gigantic company with offices on three continents.

Where does gigantic come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin gigas, with the stem gigant-, which named the Giants of mythology, the enormous beings that Greek and Roman stories said had warred against the gods. That Latin word was itself borrowed from the Greek gigas, meaning a giant of huge size and strength. By the early 1600s English had assembled the adjective gigantic from this gigant- stem plus the familiar -ic ending, giving a word meaning 'resembling a giant' and so 'huge'. The very same root sits inside the everyday word 'giant', although giant lost the hard g sound and the t of the stem on its way through Old French, while gigantic kept the fuller classical form. Remembering that hidden 'giant' inside gigantic also helps fix the spelling, since the trap is the unstressed second syllable that sounds like a vague schwa.

How the word is built

• gigant- (from Latin gigas/gigant-, giant)
• -ic (adjective suffix: of the nature of)