Huge

How to spell huge

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce huge

What does huge mean?

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

Huge in a sentence

• The new warehouse covers a huge area on the edge of town.

• They spent a huge amount of money on the kitchen renovation.

Where does huge come from?

Language of origin: French

Huge entered English in the early 1200s from the Old French word 'ahuge' or 'ahoge', meaning very large or massive, with the unstressed first syllable later worn away to leave the modern form. The deeper origin of the French word is genuinely uncertain, and scholars have never settled on a confident source, which is one reason it stands rather alone among English size words. Over the medieval period it shifted from describing sheer physical bulk to also covering large quantities, distances, and, much later, figurative greatness, as in a huge success. The silent letter to watch is the soft 'g' followed by a final silent 'e', which keeps the vowel long and the 'g' sounding like a 'j'; drop that 'e' and the word collapses. Because the spelling does not follow an obvious Latin or Greek pattern, it has to be remembered as its own small, irregular shape.

How the word is built

• huge (single root adjective, no prefix or suffix)