great
Direct German Translations & Equivalents:
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Definitions & Usage
(informal) Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic.
Important, consequential.
(qualifying nouns of family relationship) Involving more generations than the qualified word implies — as many extra generations as repetitions of the word great (from 1510s). [see Derived terms]
(obsolete, postpositive, followed by 'with') Pregnant; large with young; full of.
(obsolete, except with 'friend' and similar words such as 'mate', 'buddy') Intimate; familiar.
(applied to actions, thoughts and feelings) Arising from or possessing idealism; admirable; commanding; illustrious; eminent.
Impressive or striking.
Much in use; favoured.
(applied to persons) Of much talent or achievements.
Doing or exemplifying (a characteristic or pursuit) on a large scale; active or enthusiastic.
Expression of gladness and content about something.
A sarcastic inversion thereof.
A person of major significance, accomplishment or acclaim.
(music) The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.
(in combinations such as "two-greats", "three-greats" etc.) An instance of the word "great" signifying an additional generation in phrases expressing family relationships.
(informal) Very well (in a very satisfactory manner).
Notable Literary & Historical Quotes
““[…] 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.[…]””
— 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:
“‘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.[…]’”
— 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
“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.”
— 2013 July 19, Timothy Garton Ash, “Where Dr Pangloss meets Machiavelli”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 18: