Tremendous

How to spell tremendous

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tremendous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tremendous mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely great in amount, scale, or quality; remarkably impressive.

Tremendous in a sentence

• The team made tremendous progress on the project this quarter.

• She felt a tremendous sense of relief once the audit was complete.

Where does tremendous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Tremendous comes from the Latin tremendus, meaning 'to be trembled at' or 'fit to make one shake', which was the gerundive form of the verb tremere, 'to tremble' or 'to shake with fear'. So the literal idea behind the word is something so awesome or formidable that it makes you quiver. English adopted it in the 1600s, at first keeping that fearful sense of dreadful or terrifying, before it softened over the following century into an everyday word for anything extraordinarily large, impressive, or excellent. The same tremere root gives us 'tremble' and 'tremor', which is a useful memory anchor: the shaking idea explains the spelling, since the word keeps that -mend- middle from its Latin gerundive rather than the -mond- sound an ear might expect. Today the original menace has all but vanished, and a 'tremendous' result is simply a marvellous one.

How the word is built

• trem- (from Latin tremere: to tremble)
• -end- (gerundive 'to be...')
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)