stupendous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin stupendus (“wonderful, astonishing”), with the suffix -ous,^[2][3][4] the gerundive of stupeō (“to be stunned”).^{[2][5][6][7][8]} The OED treats the Latin adjective as classical; the American Heritage Dictionary, Barnhart and Etymonline call it Late Latin.^[2][5][6][7] The earlier English form was stupendious, which the OED explains as an irregular formation after adjectives in -ious, comparing tremendious beside tremendous.^[2][7] Barnhart and Etymonline regard stupendous as a later correction of it.^[6][7] Compare Catalan estupend (15th century), Portuguese estupendo (16th century), and Spanish estupendo and Italian stupendo (both 14th century).^[2] Etymonline traces the Latin verb, through the family of stupid, to Proto-Indo-European *(s)teu- (“to push”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

As stupendious, amazing or extremely impressive, or very large: before 1549, in A. Borde's Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge,^[2] 1547 in Barnhart and the 1540s in Etymonline.^[6][7] The spelling stupendous is first recorded in 1618, in T. Gainsford's Glory of England, for something astonishingly great in size.^[2] Etymonline and Barnhart date it to the 1660s, and Barnhart cites Pepys's diary for 1666.^[7][6]

Semantic evolution

The Latin gerundive meant "to be wondered at",^[6][7] and the English word has two sides: great size or amount (1618) and the power to astonish (1640, in J. Wilkins).^[2][9] Johnson (1755) defined it as "wonderful; amazing; astonishing", with quotations from Milton and Dryden on a bridge and a pile.^[10] The weakened sense, simply very good or splendid, is recorded from 1848, in the Spirit of the Times,^[2] and the Shorter Oxford labels it colloquial.^[3] Stupendious lingered on; the OED thinks that some later instances may be misprints of stupendous or alterations of it.^[2] A shorter adjective stupend was used from the early 17th to the mid 19th century.^[3]

Timeline

• before 1549 – stupendious, amazing, very large.^[2]
• 1618 – stupendous, astonishingly great in size, degree or amount.^[2]
• 1640 – causing wonder or astonishment.^[2][9]
• 1848 – in a weakened sense, extremely good or pleasing.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Astonishingly great in size, degree or amount; prodigious: The dam was a stupendous feat of engineering.^[9][2][11]
2. Causing wonder or astonishment; amazing.^[9][2][11]
3. (colloquial) Extremely good or pleasing; splendid.^[2][3]

Word family

• stupendously
• stupendousness

Related words

• stupid
• stupor
• stupendious
• stupefy

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins