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Gargantuan means extremely large — so large it feels a bit unbelievable or funny. A gargantuan meal, a gargantuan task, a gargantuan building. It is stronger and more colourful than big or even huge, and it often carries a smile: the size is being enjoyed, or slightly mocked. You meet it in writing and in lively speech more than in the most careful formal reports. Though actually, it started as a giant’s name, not as a measuring word. People still use it for appetite and portions as much as for height, because that giant was famous for eating.
巨大無比的、大得誇張的(帶一點文學或開玩笑的味道)
組成From French Gargantua, a giant with a huge appetite in Rabelais’s book The Inestimable Life of Gargantua. Rabelais made the name from Portuguese and Spanish garganta, “throat.”
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,原文照列,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
gargantuanadj/ɡɑːˈɡæn.t͡ʃu.ən/
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Huge; immense; tremendous.
- Some distant observers of the Scottish football scene reckon that all - all! - Gerrard has to do is beat Celtic to become a legend. Even if that was true - and, demonstrably, it is not - then it would be a gargantuan task all on its own.
- Or the twinkling dining rooms: all frilly net curtains, pink walls, kaleidoscope-patterned carpets and tiny tables, crammed with teetering piles of hand-painted ceramic crockery (think plates covered in colorful swirls and cocktail mugs shaped like heaving bosoms or ladies’ faces) that showcase gargantuan portions of Italian fare.
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obsoleteOf the giant Gargantua or his appetite.
資料來源:英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary(CC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。