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Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François 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 Gargantua'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, such that in one incident he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua led to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used for anything of tremendous size or volume.
Examples of gargantuan in a Sentence
Hugh McIntyre, Forbes.com, 19 Sep. 2025
Put simply, the gargantuan wave of capital that's been fueling the construction of data centers to meet AI computing demand isn't slowing down.
—Zev Fima, CNBC, 15 Sep. 2025
His view aligns with ideas put forth by Gerard O’Neill, the late physicist and Princeton University professor who posited that humans should aspire to live in gargantuan space stations that orbit close to home and spin to provide simulated gravity.
—Jackie Wattles, CNN Money, 12 Sep. 2025
On a moonless night in January, a gargantuan turtle was digging a nest high up on a soft sand beach at Galathea Bay on the Great Nicobar Island in the Indian Ocean.
—M. Rajshekhar, Time, 11 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Gargantuan.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gargantuan. Accessed 22 Sep. 2025.
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gargantuan
adjective
from Gargantua, a giant with an enormous appetite in books by the French author François Rabelais
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