leviathan

Pluralleviathans

1. 1
   something hugenounfigurativelycountable

   Something enormous in size or strength, especially a ship; also, a person of great power or wealth.

   Cruise-ship leviathans now crowd the old harbor, each carrying thousands of passengers.

   The railroad baron was a leviathan of industry whose fortune shaped the whole state.

   Similarbehemoth, colossus, titan, mammoth

   Note

   The bulk of the sea monster is what carries over, which is why the word suits ships so well: Byron called the wooden warships of his day "oak leviathans" in 1818. Used of a person, it can point at size as much as power, as when Edmund Burke in 1796 pictured the Duke of Bedford as a Leviathan that "tumbles about his unwieldy bulk" in the ocean of royal bounty.

2. 2
   sea monsternouncountable

   A real or imaginary sea monster of enormous size and strength, said to be more dangerous and powerful than any other creature in the ocean.

   The psalm pictures Leviathan at play in the wide sea that God made.

   Old maps show a scaly leviathan rising from the ocean beside a tiny ship.

   Note

   Behind the word is Biblical Hebrew liwyāṯān, perhaps "the tortuous one", built on a word for a garland or wreath, so the image is of something coiling. In the Bible it works as a name and is capitalized: the King James Bible of 1611 asks, "Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?" Written lowercase, a leviathan is any creature of that monstrous kind.

3. 3
   very largeadjective

   Extremely large; enormous in size or scale.

   The project came with a leviathan budget and an equally large list of problems.

   Her leviathan novel runs to more than a thousand pages.

   Similargiant, massive, immense, great, jumbo

   Oppositetiny, small, minuscule

   Note

   Here the noun is pressed into service as an adjective, often with a touch of comic exaggeration: Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) has pale-blue eyes that flood "with leviathan tears on unexpected occasions". It sits before the noun and does not grade, so there is no more leviathan or very leviathan; for that, use enormous.

4. 4
   powerful statenounfigurativelycountable

   After Thomas Hobbes, the political state, especially a domineering or totalitarian one; sometimes written with a capital L.

   Libertarians have long argued that the federal Leviathan should be cut down to size.

   Critics warned that the new surveillance law would only feed the leviathan of the security state.

   Note

   Thomas Hobbes gave the name to the commonwealth in his book of 1651: a multitude "united in one person", which he also called "that mortal god". Later writers kept the image and sharpened its edge; Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), says Hobbes depicts man "according to the needs of the Leviathan". In current use the word nearly always criticizes the state it names.

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