awesome

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Extremely good or impressive (informal).

   That concert was absolutely awesome!

2. 2
   adj

   So impressive or powerful that it fills you with wonder.

   The waterfall was an awesome sight.

From awe + -some; compare earlier awful and Middle English eiful (“inducing fright or terror, terrible”), from Old English eġeful (“fearful; inspiring awe”). The oldest meaning of awesome is of “something which inspires awe”, but the word is now also a common colloquial expression. It was originally so used in the United States, where it had featured strikingly in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, as used by Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto to describe the "awesome" industrial potential of the United States. Consequently, as the word popularly became an expression for anything superb, in its or…

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