big

Meaning

1. Of great size, large.
2. (informal) Of great size, large.
3. Large with young; pregnant; swelling; ready to give birth or produce.
4. (informal) Well-endowed; with a desired body part notably large.
5. (informal) Well-endowed; with a desired body part notably large.
6. (informal) Well-endowed; with a desired body part notably large.
7. (informal) Adult; (of a child) older.
8. (informal,slang) Adult; (of a child) older.
9. (informal) Mature, conscientious, principled; generous.
10. (informal) Important or significant.
11. Popular.
12. Populous.
13. (informal) Used as an intensifier, especially of negative-valence nouns
14. Operating on a large scale, especially if therefore having undue or sinister influence.
15. (informal) Enthusiastic (about).

large

great

enormous

be big

full-sized

important person

very big

fully grown

self-aggrandising

the oldest

grow large

unwieldy

elder brother

something big

fat meat

be wide

rather big

not light

fair-and-square

of import

real stuff

lump of rock

rank,

i & 3

beardown

honest-to-god

large quantity

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/bɪɡ/

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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