Titanic
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: tītănʹĭk
ipa: /taɪˈtænɪk/
rhymes: -ænɪk
Forms: form: more Titanic
form: most Titanic
form: titanic
Etymology: From Late Latin Titanicus, or its etymon Ancient Greek Τιτανικός (Titanikós, “of or relating to the Titans”), from Τιτᾶνες (Titânes, “Titans”) + -ικός (-ikós, “suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives”). Τιτᾶνες (Titânes) is the nominative or vocative plural of Τῑτᾱ́ν (Tītā́n, “a Titan”), and then possibly:
* from τῐ́σῐς (tĭ́sĭs, “payment; atonement, penalty, punishment, retribution, reward; vengeance”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kʷey- (“to pay; to avenge”); or
* from τιταίνω (titaínō, “to extend, stretch”), from τείνω (teínō, “to extend, stretch; to spread; to exert, push to the limit, strain”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ten- (“to extend, stretch”); or
* from τίτο (títo, “sun; day”), originally borrowed from Anatolian.
The English word is analysable as Titan + -ic (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives from nouns).
Senses: synonyms: word: Titanian
word: titanical
glosses: Of or relating to the Titans, a race of giant gods in Greek mythology.
examples: text: Rome—Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, / In the same dust and blackness, and we pass / The skeleton of her Titanic form, / Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
ref: 1818, Lord Byron, “Canto IV”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Fourth, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza XLVI, page 26:
text: And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have overarched the middle ones, and so have gone round on their backs.
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Grand Armada”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, pages 430–431:
synonyms: word: Titanian
word: titanical
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
antonyms: word: large
glosses: Having great size, or great force, power, or strength.
glosses: Of a conflict or contest: involving equally powerful participants.
Related terms: Titanian
titanical