giant
Noun pluralgiants
Pluralgiants
- 1Extremely large in size, far exceeding what is usual or expected.
A giant oak shaded the entire courtyard from the afternoon sun.
The festival ended with a giant fireworks display over the harbor.
UsageUsually before a noun: a giant wave, a giant display. To compare sizes, use bigger or larger instead.
- 2A legendary being of human form but enormous size and strength, found in folklore, fairy tales, and myths such as the Greek Gigantes and the Norse jötnar.
The young knight set out to slay the giant terrorizing the village.
Old legends warned travelers of the giants who guarded the mountain passes.
Note
The core of the word, and the end of a long road: Middle English geaunt, from Old French geant, from Latin gigās and Greek gígas. Its arrival displaced the native Old English ent, which modern English knows only through Tolkien's revival of it for his giant tree-men, the Ents.
- 3A very large and powerful organization or company.
The merger created a banking giant with branches across three continents.
Regulators worried that the industry giants were squeezing out smaller rivals.
UsageThe field comes first: a retail giant, the tech giants. Before a company's name, news writing often drops the article: healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson.
Similarheavyweight, titan, behemoth, powerhouse
- 4An unusually tall or large species of a particular animal or plant.
Among the pines and firs of the Sierra Nevada, the sequoia stands out as a giant.
Among bamboos, several tropical giants reach heights of thirty meters.
- 5
- 6A person of extraordinary physical strength or intellectual power.
She became a giant in the field of genetics within a single decade.
The conference brought together the giants of contemporary philosophy.
UsageOften a giant of a field: a giant of science. No intellectual giant is an ironic way to say someone is not clever.
Similartitan, luminary, heavyweight, colossus
Note
Greatness of strength or mind, not of height, is the measure here. The phrase there were giants in those days looks back on a lost age of greater people; Richard Jefferies bends it in The Amateur Poacher (1879) to marvel at an old flintlock no modern arm could hold steady.
Less common meanings
- 7A star considerably more luminous than a main-sequence star of the same temperature, such as a red giant or a blue giant.
Astronomers classified the star as a giant from its brightness and spectrum.
Aging stars expand into red giants as their cores run low on hydrogen.
Note
Astronomers measure this giant by brightness, not bulk alone: it outshines a main-sequence star of its temperature because its radius is much larger, usually after it has evolved off the main sequence. Such stars lie above the main sequence on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. In astronomy, giant can stand alone; familiar combinations include red giant and blue giant.
- 8A gymnastics maneuver in which a gymnast swings through a full circle, usually with the body extended.
- 9In Ethernet networking, a frame that exceeds the maximum permitted frame size, traditionally 1,518 bytes for an untagged frame.
Showing meanings only.
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Origin
This word came through Middle English geaunt from Old French geant, from Vulgar Latin *gagās and Latin gigās, ultimately from Ancient Greek γίγας (gígas, "giant"). It is related to giga- and replaced the native Old English word ent.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Giant came through Middle English and Old French from Vulgar Latin, Latin, and ultimately Ancient Greek. en.wiktionary.org
- Giant and giga- share an etymological root. en.wiktionary.org
- Giant displaced the native Old English word ent. en.wiktionary.org