momentous

From moment (“weight, importance”) +‎ -ous.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /məʊˈmɛn.təs/
• (US) IPA^(key): /moʊˈmɛn.təs/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɛntəs

momentous (comparative more momentous, superlative most momentous)

1. Outstanding in importance, of great consequence.
   • 1725, Daniel Defoe, Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business:

     The reason why I did not publish this book till the end of the last sessions of parliament was, because I did not care to interfere with more momentous affairs.

   • 1831, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 31, in Homeward Bound:

     "It has been a momentous month, and I hope we shall all retain healthful recollections of it as long as we live."

   • 1902, Joseph Conrad, chapter 3, in The End of the Tether:

     What to the other parties was merely the sale of a ship was to him a momentous event involving a radically new view of existence.

   • 1952 December, R. C. Riley, “By Rail to Kemp Town”, in Railway Magazine, page 835:

     The last train ran on December 31, 1932, almost unnoticed, for it coincided with the running of the last steam passenger train down the main line from London to Brighton, a much more momentous event.

   • 2007 July 1, Richard Dawkins, “Inferior Design”, in New York Times, retrieved 19 November 2013:

     Natural selection is arguably the most momentous idea ever to occur to a human mind, because it — alone as far as we know — explains the elegant illusion of design that pervades the living kingdoms and explains, in passing, us.

• momentously
• momentousness

• mesonotum