great
adjectiveinterjectionnounadverbtop 1 000 in film dialogue
- United Kingdom//ˈɡɹɛjt//
- United States//ˈɡɹeɪt//
- Australia//ˈɡɹæɪt//
- Scotland//ˈɡɾet//
Taking much space; large.
adjective
- 1
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 good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer.[…]”
‘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 them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’
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 an extraordinary range of countries simultaneously sitting down to negotiate big free trade and investment agreements.
- 2
Taking much space; large. 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.
- 3
informalTaking much space; large. Intensifying a word or expression, used in mild oaths.
a dirty great smack in the face
Great Scott!
- 4
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 to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.
- 5
Important, consequential.
a great dilemma
a great decision
So the King made Daniel a great man […]
The Dawn is over-caſt, the Morning low’rs, And heavily in Clouds brings on the Day, The great, th’ important Day; big with the Fate Of Cato and of Rome.
- 6
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
- 7
obsoletePregnant; large with young; full of.
great with child
great with hope
the ewes great with young
- 8
obsoleteIntimate; familiar.
those that are so great with him
- 9
Arising from or possessing idealism; admirable; commanding; illustrious; eminent.
a great deed
a great nature
a great history
- 10
Impressive or striking.
a great show of wealth
- 11
Much in use; favoured.
Poetry was a great convention of the Romantic era.
- 12
Of much talent or achievements.
a great hero, scholar, genius, philosopher, writer, etc.
- 13
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
Etymology
From Middle English greet, grete (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, massive; tall; thick; coarse”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“coarse, crude; big, large”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub; to stroke; to grind; to remove”). Cognates Cognate with Scots graat, great, greet (“great”), Yola graat (“great”), North Frisian grat, groot, grot, grut, gråt, 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”), Limburgish grut, gruët (“big, large; grand; tall; adult; pregnant”), 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”), Greek χρίω (chrío, “to anoint”), Albanian grind (“to brawl, fight”), Latvian grauds (“grain”), Lithuanian grūdas (“grain”), Czech hrouda, hruda (“clod”), Macedonian грутка (grutka, “clod, clump, lump”), Polish gruda (“clod, lump; frozen ground; mud fever, scratches”), Russian гру́да (grúda, “clod, heap, mass, pile”), Serbo-Croatian гру̏да, гру̏два, grȕda, grȕdva (“clod, lump; snowball”), Armenian կորկոտ (korkot, “groats of wheat or barley”), Sanskrit घर्षति (gharṣati, “to brush, polish, rub”). 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.
interjection
- 1
Expression of gladness and content about something.
Great! Thanks for the wonderful work.
—I am in my new apartment! —Great!
- 2
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.
noun
- 1
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 difference between Messi and the players on the next rung below – the ones who can be described as great footballers without necessarily being football greats.
- 2
The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.
- 3
An instance of the word great signifying an additional generation in phrases expressing family relationships.
my three-greats grandmother
- 4
informalA great-grandparent.
I knew my great-gran, but no one really believed the Montez story until we saw photos of the sinous dancer. My great was the spiitng^([sic]) image of HER great.
On my Ma's side, I have a whole lotta Scot (Ferguson), with some Irish, and her maternal gandpa^([sic]) (my great) was from Trieste, so also Italian-Austrian-Slovenian.
My great-grandparents were immigrants from Hjelmeland, Rogaland, Norway, I believe. […] They sailed on the Bergensfjord. From the story my grandmother gives my great was pregnant when she boarded the ship.
adverb
- 1
informalVery well (in a very satisfactory manner).
Those mechanical colored pencils work great because they don’t have to be sharpened.
Forms
- plural
- greats
- comparative
- greater
- superlative
- greatest