stupendous

First attested from 1547, from Late Latin stupendus (“stunning, amazing”), from the verb stupeō (“(I) am stunned”). Doublet of stupend (which is obsolete), and related to stupor and stupid.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /stuˈpɛndəs/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /stjuˈpɛndəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛndəs

stupendous (comparative more stupendous, superlative most stupendous)

1. Astonishingly great or large; huge; enormous.

   One cannot appreciate how stupendous the Matterhorn is without seeing it.

   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter V, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 80:

     The entrance to Fonthill—that truly cloud-capt palace, so fantastic and so transitory—was by two stupendous doors, which seemed to defy the strength of giants.

   • 1834, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii‎^[1]:

     Over the broadest there seemed to spring a cragged and stupendous arch, from which, as from the jaws of hell, gushed the sources of the sudden Phlegethon.

2. Of stunning excellence or degree; marvelous.

   The renovator created a stupendous new look for our house.

• colossal, enormous, huge, marvelous, prodigious, terrific, tremendous
• See also Thesaurus:large

• stupid
• See also Thesaurus:small

• stupendously
• stupendousness

• stupid
• stupor

• Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary, 1987-1996.