different between huge vs elephantine

English

Etymology

From Middle English huge, from Old French ahuge (“high, lofty, great, large, huge”), from a hoge (“at height”), from a (“at, to”) + hoge (“a hill, height”), from Frankish *haug, *houg (“height, hill”) or Old Norse haugr (“hill”); both from Proto-Germanic *haugaz (“hill, mound”), from Proto-Indo-European *kowkós (“hill, mound”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *kewk-. Akin to Old High German houg (“mound”) (compare related German Hügel (“hill”)), Old Norse haugr (“mound”), Lithuanian ka?karas (“hill”), Old High German h?h (“high”) (whence German hoch), Old English h?ah (“high”). More at high.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /hju?d??/, [çu??d??]
• (US)
• (NYC, some other US dialects) IPA^(key): /ju?d?/
• (Norfolk) IPA^(key): [h?ud?]

Adjective

huge (comparative huger, superlative hugest)

1. Very large.

   • “I don't mean all of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera, […] the chlorotic squatters on huge yachts, […] the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard—!”
2. (slang) Distinctly interesting, significant, important, likeable, well regarded.

Synonyms

• (very large): colossal, elephantine, enormous, giant, gigantic, immense, prodigious, vast.
• See also Thesaurus:gigantic

Antonyms

• (very large): tiny, small, minuscule, midget, dwarf

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• huge in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• huge in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• e-hug, eugh, gehu

Middle English

Alternative forms

• hoige, houge, hugge, hoge, hogge, hoege, heug, heuge, hogh

Etymology

From Old French ahuge, a form of ahoge.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?hiu?d?(?)/

Adjective

huge

1. huge, large, enormous
2. great, severe, excessive, prominent
3. numerous, plentiful

Descendants

• English: huge
• Scots: huge, hudge

References

• “h??e, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-03.

Adverb

huge

1. hugely, greatly

References

• “h??e, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-03.

Middle French

Noun

huge f (plural huges)

1. market stall

English

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?l.?.?fæn.tin/, /?l.?.?fæn.t?n/, /?l.?.?fæn.ta?n/

Adjective

elephantine (comparative more elephantine, superlative most elephantine)

1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of elephants.
   • 1989, H. T. Willetts (translator), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author), August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ?ISBN, page 179:

     This last summer Hanecki had captured Lenin’s imagination with his plans to found a trading company of his own in Europe, or take a partnership in some existing firm and make guaranteed monthly remittances to the Party out of his profits. This was not a Russian pipe dream: every move had been worked out with impressive precision. Kuba hadn’t thought of it himself, it was the brainchild of the elephantine genius Parvus, who had been writing to him from Constantinople. Parvus, once as poor as any other Social Democrat, had gone to Turkey to organize strikes, and now wrote frankly that he had all the money he needed (if rumor was right, he was fabulously wealthy) and that the time had come for the Party too to get rich.

2. Very large.

Synonyms

• (of or relating to elephants): elephantic, elephantlike
• (very large): See also Thesaurus:gigantic

Derived terms

• elephantine epoch
• elephantine leprosy
• elephantine tortoise

Translations

Latin

Adjective

elephantine

1. vocative masculine singular of elephantinus