/ˈɡɹeɪt/, /ˈɡɹæɪt/, [ˈɡɹeːt]
OriginFrom Middle English greet (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, thick, coarse, massive”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“big in size, coarse, coarse grained”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub, grind, remove”).
Cognates
Cognate with Scots graat, great, greet (“great”), Yola graat (“great”), North Frisian grat, groot, grot, grut, gurt (“big, great, large”), Saterland Frisian groot (“big, large”), West Frisian grut (“big, great, large”), Alemannic German groß, gruuss (“very large”), Central Franconian jruß (“big, great, large”), Cimbrian gròas, groaz (“big, great, large”), Dutch and German Low German groot (“big, great, large”), German gross, groß (“big, large”), Luxembourgish grouss (“big, great, large”), Mòcheno groas (“big, great, large”), Vilamovian grus, grūs (“big, great, large”), Yiddish גרויס (groys, “big, large”); also Latin grandis (“big, great, large”). Related to grit. Doublet of gross.
The modern pronunciation shows an irregular change of Early Modern English /ɛː/ to /eɪ/ in the standard language; contrast this with the development of other words such as beat and heat.
- Taking much space; large.
““[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like // Here's rattling good luck and roaring”
“‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on ”
“Hidden behind thickets of acronyms and gorse bushes of detail, a new great game is under way across the globe. Some call it geoeconomics, but it's geopolitics too. The current power play consists of a”
- Much, more than usual.
“great worry”
““We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?””
“The first half of this century has been referred to as the golden age of medicine. To me it seems more probable that we are on the threshold of a much greater age.”
- British, informalIntensifying a word or expression, used in mild oaths.
“a dirty great smack in the face”
“Great Scott!”
- informalVery good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic.
“Dinner was great.”
“He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights,[…], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed”
- Important, consequential.
“a great dilemma”
“a great decision”
“So the King made Daniel a great man […]”
- Involving more generations than the qualified word implies — as many extra generations as repetitions of the word great (from 1510s).
“great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather”
- obsolete, postpositionalPregnant; large with young; full of.
“great with child”
“great with hope”
“the ewes great with young”
- obsoleteIntimate; familiar.
“those that are so great with him”
- Arising from or possessing idealism; admirable; commanding; illustrious; eminent.
“a great deed”
“a great nature”
“a great history”
- Impressive or striking.
- Much in use; favoured.
“Poetry was a great convention of the Romantic era.”
- Of much talent or achievements.
“a great hero, scholar, genius, philosopher, writer, etc.”
- Doing or exemplifying (a characteristic or pursuit) on a large scale; active or enthusiastic.
“What a great buffoon!”
“He’s not a great one for reading.”
“a great walker”
- Expression of gladness and content about something.
“Great! Thanks for the wonderful work.”
“—I am in my new apartment! —Great!”
- A sarcastic inversion thereof.
“Oh, great! I just dumped all 500 sheets of the manuscript all over and now I have to put them back in order.”
- A person of major significance, accomplishment or acclaim.
“Newton and Einstein are two of the greats of the history of science.”
“Sadio Mané wasted a glorious chance in the first half and, late on, Mohamed Salah turned his shot against a post after a goal-line clearance had spun his way. That, in a nutshell, perhaps sums up the ”
- The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.
- An instance of the word "great" signifying an additional generation in phrases expressing family relationships.
“My three-greats grandmother.”
- informal, not-comparableVery well (in a very satisfactory manner).
“Those mechanical colored pencils work great because they don’t have to be sharpened.”
Formsgreater(comparative) · greatest(superlative) · gert(alternative, dialectal) · girt(alternative, dialectal) · gurt(alternative, dialectal) · greats(plural)