huge
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /hjuːd͡ʒ/
ipa: [çu̟ːd͡ʒ]
note: New York City, some other US dialects
ipa: /juːdʒ/
ipa: [hʊudʒ]
rhymes: -uːdʒ
Forms: form: huger
form: more huge
form: hugest
form: most huge
form: hudge
Etymology: From Middle English huge, from Old French ahuge (“high, lofty, great, large, huge”), from a hoge (“at height”), from a (“at, to”) + hoge (“a hill, height”), from Frankish *haug, *houg (“height, hill”) or Old Norse haugr (“hill”); both from Proto-Germanic *haugaz (“hill, mound”), from Proto-Indo-European *kowkós (“hill, mound”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *kewk-. Akin to Old High German houg (“mound”) (compare related German Hügel (“hill”)), Old Norse haugr (“mound”), Lithuanian kaũkaras (“hill”), Old High German hōh (“high”) (whence German hoch), Old English hēah (“high”). More at high.
Senses: examples: text: “I don't mean all of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera,[…]the chlorotic squatters on huge yachts,[…]the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard—!”
ref: 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VI, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
text: The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century,[…].
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
text: [Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.
ref: 2013 July 20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:
synonyms: word: great
word: ample
word: big
word: bodacious
word: broad
word: commodious
word: considerable
word: expansive
word: good-sized
word: full
word: generous
word: giant
word: grand
word: great
word: hefty
word: hench
word: immense
word: jumbo
word: larger than life
word: largifical
word: leviathan
word: long
word: massive
word: mega-
word: overlarge
word: outsized
word: oversize
word: oversized
word: prodigious
word: roomy
word: rotund
word: sizeable
word: spacious
word: stonking
word: tall
word: vast
word: voluminous
word: wide
word: astronomic
word: behemothic
word: big fat
word: boxcar
word: Brobdingnagian
word: bulky
word: colossal
word: cyclopean
word: Daniel Lambertish
word: elephantine
word: elephantic
word: enormous
word: gargantuan
word: giantesque
word: gigantesque
word: gigantic
word: ginormous
word: great big
word: honkin'
word: huge
word: hulking
word: humongous
word: hunormous
word: immane
word: mahoosive
word: mammoth
word: mastodonic
word: monstrous
word: monumental
word: mountainous
word: pantagruelian
word: pyramidal
word: Pythonic
word: stupendous
word: super-
word: supersized
word: titanic
word: tremendous
word: whopping
word: yuge
glosses: Very large.
examples: text: Both of my parents are huge supporters of animal rights.
synonyms: great
glosses: Very strong, powerful, or dedicated.
examples: text: The band's next album is going to be huge.
text: In our league our coach is huge!
synonyms: great
glosses: Very interesting, significant, or popular.
Derived terms: hugantic
hugely
hugemongous
hugen
hugeness
hugeous
hugesome
huge tegu
hugy
humongous
hunormous
overhuge
superhuge