Everyday LifeGreek → English
Colossal
/kəˈlɒsəl/adjective
Enormous in size, extent, or degree.
The Greek roots
κολοσσός
kolossós
giant statue
Literally: “like a giant statue”
Follow a root:κολοσσός2 words
The story of the word
Herodotus used κολοσσός of the huge stone figures he saw in Egypt, and the word is probably not native Greek at all but borrowed from an older Mediterranean language. The bronze Helios at Rhodes, roughly thirty metres tall and standing barely fifty years before an earthquake dropped it, made the word mean size rather than statue. Rome's Colosseum takes its name from a colossal statue of Nero that once stood beside it, not from the arena's own bulk.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
colossusColosseum
In a sentence
Rebuilding the bridge turned out to be a colossal waste of money.