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big

Pronunciation: /bɪɡ/

The English word “big” has 20 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Of great size, large.
  2. Fat.
  3. Large with young; pregnant; swelling; ready to give birth or produce.
  4. Specifically, big-breasted.
  5. Having a large penis.
  6. Having large muscles, especially visible ones such as the chest and arm muscles.
  7. Adult; (of a child) older.
  8. Old, mature. Used to imply that someone is too old for something, or acting immaturely.
  9. Mature, conscientious, principled; generous.
  10. Important or significant.
  11. Popular.
  12. Populous.
  13. Used as an intensifier, especially of negative-valence nouns
  14. Operating on a large scale, especially if therefore having undue or sinister influence.
  15. Enthusiastic (about).

adverb

  1. In a loud manner.
  2. In a boasting manner.
  3. In a large amount or to a large extent.
  4. (modifying a preposition)
  5. On a large scale, expansively.

Etymology

Inherited from Northern Middle English big, bigge (“powerful, strong”), possibly from a dialect of Old Norse. Ultimately perhaps a derivative of Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”), in which case big would be related to bogey, bugbear, and bug. Compare dialectal Norwegian bugge (“great man”), Low German Bögge, Boggelmann.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.