What's the difference between colossal and gargantuan?

Colossal


Definition:

  • (a.) Of enormous size; gigantic; huge; as, a colossal statue.
  • (a.) Of a size larger than heroic. See Heroic.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Businesses will be ecstatic at today's decision because the Games will bring a colossal one-off commercial boost to the entire country," said the group's president, Michael Cassidy.
  • (2) Mockingjay Part 1 may simply be suffering due to the huge success earlier this year of the latest Transformers movie, which made a colossal $301m in China .
  • (3) The Baltic nations, Ukraine and the countries of the southern Caucasus did not regain their independence until the final, colossal crash of the Soviet Union three years later.
  • (4) Still, the book, which was written by Blair himself rather than a ghostwriter and is scheduled for publication in September, has already earned him a colossal advance, said to be around £5m.
  • (5) The proposed rework was a “seriously retrograde step” – “a colossal mistake, and a dangerous one.” The opposition leader validated arguments Jewish groups, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, have raised this past week against the proposed RDA changes.
  • (6) Latest official figures seen by the Guardian, however, throw into sharp relief the colossal scale of the business, a back-office beehive of activity.
  • (7) The trio at the top – Lord Stevenson, the bank's chairman "from its birth to its death" and successive chief executives Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby – were roundly blamed for the colossal failures that led to its collapse.
  • (8) For many City investors, however, these colossal payouts are not at all troubling.
  • (9) They punished aspiration by introducing tuition fees, saddled public services with long-term debt through the colossal rip-off of PFI, and began privatising our NHS – laying the foundations for some of the pernicious policies of this coalition as they did so.
  • (10) Former UN official accuses world body of 'colossal mismanagement' Read more While the UN provides shelter to about 200,000 people in their protection of civilians (POC) sites, the recent report is surely testament to the failure, at least in part, of this mandate, cataloguing horrific abuses against thousands of civilians.
  • (11) The colossal tarpaulin roof had actually been opened and closed regularly throughout the day, as if taunting those fans who could not attend the rescheduled game, as the locals sought to dry the surface so there was an irony this game kicked off with autumnal sunshine pouring through the concourse under the canopy.
  • (12) So for him to come along and lie to us and get that deep into our lives was a colossal, colossal betrayal."
  • (13) "It's a welcome decision but it also underscores what a colossal strategic blunder it was mov ing the News at Ten in the first place and allowing the BBC in to steal the slot."
  • (14) In their article, they argue: “The status quo is a colossal con perpetrated on the public by politicians who are too scared to break the taboo.” Portugal decriminalised all drugs at the turn of the century.
  • (15) Further investment would be required on the sections of route from Leamington Spa to Birmingham and between Leamington Spa and Coventry, but the cost of these improvements would be small change when set against the colossal bill for HS2.
  • (16) Unlike the colossal dead weight waste of giving winter fuel payments to the likes of me, EMA is tightly targeted.
  • (17) He has never dared refute the Institute for Fiscal Studies' predictions of 500,000 more children made poor as a direct result of his colossal £18bn benefit cuts.
  • (18) The west's inaction in the face of the pending Ba'athist and Shia Islamist victory amounts to a colossal failure of leadership.
  • (19) The vote was seen as vital for Greece to press ahead with austerity measures and avoid defaulting on its colossal €355bn (£297bn) debt.
  • (20) The war was either a colossal mistake or a struggle for important principles.

Gargantuan


Definition:

  • (a.) Characteristic of Gargantua, a gigantic, wonderful personage; enormous; prodigious; inordinate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The world is in awe of China’s relentless capacity to produce gargantuan cities, each outdoing the most recent superlative that describes its predecessor.
  • (2) Behind the sedately revolving capsules of the London Eye, plucky local resident George Turner has been holding another gargantuan development machine to account in a David-and-Goliath planning battle that reached the High Court.
  • (3) That means reconsidering the ‘sacred cows’ of the political class, including overseas aid and the gargantuan scale of the welfare state.
  • (4) But it's fair to say a fondness for sniping games marks me out as a coward who'd rather take potshots from a distance than actually climb down from the tree and enter the fray like a man, a theory backed up by the fact that while I love sniping, I detest "stealth games" (because it's scary when you get caught) and "boss fights" where you have to battle some gargantuan show-off 10 times your height who keeps knocking you on your arse with his tail.
  • (5) The game combines elements of the first-person shooter (FPS) and role-playing game (RPG) genres into one gargantuan experience.
  • (6) The good news is that you don't have to travel to southern California to get a taste of 2014's blockbuster wannabes: a slew of trailers that debuted inside the San Diego Convention Centre 's gargantuan Hall H have now hit the web – and there's no need to dress up like Xena the warrior princess to watch them.
  • (7) The annual gatherings have grown from roughly 500 participants at the first official climate negotiations in Berlin in 1995 to sprawling jamborees – gargantuan rotating festivals of anything remotely associated with environmental causes or, increasingly, profit-making “green” enterprises.
  • (8) This deal-making, in which she forged alliances with the Nordic countries, signed deals with Tony Blair's Labour government and struck agreements with the Bretton Woods institutions, will stand her in good stead when she moves to the gargantuan, Chinese-built AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  • (9) Just a million years earlier, the planet had been devastated by a gargantuan eruption of natural gas, which caused unprecedented greenhouse warming.
  • (10) An inquiry led by Lord Justice Leveson , meanwhile, held a spectacularly harsh light to the "ethics and practices" of the press and the politicians last summer and, in a gargantuan 1,987-page report in November, recommended a broad and complex system in which newspapers remained self-regulated but with a new body replacing the fatally criticised Press Complaints Commission and being recognised in law.
  • (11) Below, a gargantuan steel ring hovers 10 storeys above the ground, its perimeter adorned with metal spikes.
  • (12) I suppose the most humanitarian purpose of all would be to prevent the slaughter of innocents because the slaughter of innocents is what we have seen on a gargantuan scale in Syria and northern Iraq in the last few months,” he said.
  • (13) And then there’s the gargantuan American arsenal of weapons and the havoc wreaked with it.
  • (14) To One Love Manchester then, the gargantuan benefit concert in aid of the victims of the horrific terror attack in Manchester at the Ariana Grande gig in May .
  • (15) He is to blame for the gargantuan queues outside petrol stations."
  • (16) The gargantuan total, the first time a movie has ever opened north of $500m, was helped by a gigantic $204.6m US total and huge $100.8m Chinese bow, as well as $29.6m in the UK.
  • (17) Next season’s gargantuan Premier League television deal means promoted teams stand to benefit by a minimum of £170m – even the bottom club will receive just under £100m in broadcast and merit money followed by about £75m in parachute payments.
  • (18) The British parliament is then meant to “amend, repeal and improve” each law as necessary – a gargantuan task.
  • (19) When Huhne was one of the first cabinet ministers to settle at the end of September, the gargantuan challenges in his in-tray led people to assume he might have folded early rather than fought the good fight.
  • (20) At the time, the gargantuan listing valued the Switzerland-based company at about £37bn – despite its reputation for secrecy, and scepticism that it could maintain its huge trading profits.