gargantuan adj. [gahr-GAN-chuh-wuhn]

Defintion

: trememdous in size, volume, or degreee: gigantic, colossal
在尺寸，容量，或程度方面无比巨大的；同义词：gigantic，colossal

Did You Know?

Gargantua is the name of a giant king in Francios Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua, the second part of a five-volume series about the giant and his son Pantagruel. All of the details of Gargantu's life befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that it fells the entire forest of Orleans. He has an enormous appetite: in one memorable incident, he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua gave rise to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used of anything of trememdous size or volume.

Gargantua是一个巨人国王的名字，出现在16世纪的Francios Rabelais的5卷本讽刺小说的第二部分Gargantua中（讲述这位巨人与他的儿子Pantagruel的故事）。对Gargantu的生活的细节描述完全符合一个巨人应有的特征。他骑着一头巨大的母马，这个母马的尾巴晃动时产生威力如此巨大，以至于Orleans的一整片森林都被摧毁了；他还有极大的胃口：在一个令人难忘的事件中，他在吃萨拉时不经意间吞掉了5个朝圣者。任何与Gargantua关联的事情都如此大规模，由此产生了形容词gargantuan，这个词自从William Shakespear时代就开始使用，用来象征巨大无比的尺寸或容量。

注：satiric - 讽刺的，挖苦的；befit - 合适，适宜，对...适当； inadvertently - 非故意地，不经意间地，疏忽地；give rise to - 产生

Examples

"In 1920, the town council of Chamonix ... decided to change the municipality's name to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, thus forging an official link to the mountain ... with a summit that soars 12,000 feet above the town center. The council's goal was to prevent their Swiss neighbors from claiming the mountain's glory, but there was really no need: It's impossible when you're in Chamonix to ignore the gargantuan, icy beauty that looms overhead."
--- Paige McClanahan, The New York Time, 13 Dec. 2018

在1920年，Chamonix的镇政会，... 决定将镇政府的名称改为 Chamonix-Mont-Blanc（意思是：Chamonix-白色的大山），这样就打造了一个官方的与大山的连接... 这个大山有一个高出镇中心12000英尺的山峰。镇政府的这一举动目的是阻止他们的瑞士邻居对大山荣耀的宣告，不过实际上实在没有必要。当你处于Chamonix镇上时，是不可能忽略这交织在头顶上的巨大无比的冰山美色。
"Due to our gargantuan scope, Houston is a haven for live music. As the nation's fourth largest city, we have become a destination for touring acts by default - it certainly isn't because of our collective reputation as an audience...."
--- Matthew Keever, The Houston Press, 17 Dec. 2018

由于我们无与伦比的广泛性，Houston是现场音乐的大港口。作为全国第4大城市，我们已经成为事实上的各种巡回演出的默认目的地 - 这显然不是由于我们作为观众的集体名声..."

Reference

Francios Rabelais (between 1483 and1494 --- 9 April 1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. His best known work is Gargantua and Pantagruel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais

illustration for Gargantua and Pantagruel by Gustave Dore.

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