great

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   of major significance or importance

   a great work of art

2. 2
   adj

   remarkable or out of the ordinary in degree or magnitude or effect

   a great crisis

3. 3
   noun

   a person who has achieved distinction and honor in some field

   They are one of the greats of American music.

4. 4
   adj

   Taking much space; large.

   “[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like // Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer.[…]”

5. 5
   adj

   Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic.

   Dinner was great.

6. 6
   adj

   Important, consequential.

   a great dilemma

7. 7
   adj

   Involving more generations than the qualified word implies — as many extra generations as repetitions of the word great (from 1510s).

   great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather

8. 8
   adj

   Pregnant; large with young; full of.

   great with child

Etymology

From Middle English greet (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, thick, coarse, massive”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“big in size, coarse, coarse grained”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub, grind, remove”). Cognates Cognate with Scots graat, great, greet (“great”), Yola graat (“great”), North Frisian grat, groot, grot, grut, gurt (“big, great, large”), Saterland Frisian groot (“big, large”), West Frisian grut (“big, great, large”), Alemannic German groß, gruuss (“very large”), Central Franconian jruß (“big, great, large”), Cimbri…