gargantuan

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The Word of the Day for April 21 is:

gargantuan   \gar-GAN-shuh-wun\   adjective 
     : tremendous in size, volume, or degree : gigantic, colossal 

Example sentence: 
     The town's wealthiest family lived in a gargantuan mansion at the top of 
the hill, complete with twelve bedrooms, two swimming pools and a tennis court.

Did you know? 
     "Gargantua" is the name of a giant king in Francois Rabelais's 
16th-century satiric novel _Gargantua_. All of the details of Gargantua's life 
befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that 
it fells the entire forest of Orleans. He has an enormous appetite -- in one 
memorable incident, he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a 
salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua gave rise to the 
adjective "gargantuan," which since Shakespeare's time has been used of 
anything of tremendous size or volume.