Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

great

/ˈɡɹeɪt/ adjective, interjection, noun, adverb

Forms greater greatest greats geet gert girt gurt

  1. adjective Taking much space; large.
  2. adjective (of an abstract noun) Much, more than usual. “great worry”
  3. adjective (informal, UK) Intensifying a word or expression, used in mild oaths. “a dirty great smack in the face”
  4. adjective (informal) Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic. “Dinner was great.”
  5. adjective Important, consequential. “a great dilemma”
  6. adjective (qualifying nouns of family relationship) Involving more generations than the qualified word implies — as many extra generations as repetitions of the word great (from 1510s). [see Derived terms] “great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather”
  7. adjective (obsolete, postpositive, followed by ‘with’) Pregnant; large with young; full of. “great with child”
  8. adjective (obsolete, except with ‘friend’ and similar words such as ‘mate’, ‘buddy’) Intimate; familiar.
  9. interjection Expression of gladness and content about something. “Great! Thanks for the wonderful work.”
  10. interjection A sarcastic inversion thereof. “Oh, great! I just dumped all 500 sheets of the manuscript all over and now I have to put them back in order.”
  11. noun A person of major significance, accomplishment or acclaim. “Newton and Einstein are two of the greats of the history of science.”
  12. noun (music) The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.
  13. noun (in combinations such as two-greats, three-greats, etc.) An instance of the word great signifying an additional generation in phrases expressing family relationships. “my three-greats grandmother”
  14. noun (informal, rare) A great-grandparent.
  15. adverb (informal) Very well (in a very satisfactory manner). “Those mechanical colored pencils work great because they don’t have to be sharpened.”

Synonyms

grand super- supra- hyper- ultra- uber- macro- arch- over- mega- giga- -zilla gr8 grt outstanding bang-up bully corking cracking dandy groovy keen neat nifty not bad peachy slap-up swell smashing capital

Antonyms

tiny mediocre ordinary

Etymology

From Middle English greet, grete (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, massive; tall; thick; coarse”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“coarse, crude; big, large”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub; to stroke; to grind; to remove”).
Cognate with Scots graat, great, greet (“great”), Yola graat (“great”), North Frisian grat, groot, grot, grut, gråt, 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”), Cimbrian gròas, groaz (“big, great, large”), Dutch and German Low German groot (“big, great, large”), German gross, groß (“big, large”), Limburgish grut, gruët (“big, large; grand; tall; adult; pregnant”), Luxembourgish grouss (“big, great, large”), Mòcheno groas (“big, great, large”), Vilamovian grus, grūs (“big, great, large”), Yiddish גרויס (groys, “big, large”); also Latin grandis (“big, great, large”), Greek χρίω (chrío, “to anoint”), Albanian grind (“to brawl, fight”), Latvian grauds (“grain”), Lithuanian grūdas (“grain”), Czech hrouda, hruda (“clod”), Macedonian грутка (grutka, “clod, clump, lump”), Polish gruda (“clod, lump; frozen ground; mud fever, scratches”), Russian гру́да (grúda, “clod, heap, mass, pile”), Serbo-Croatian гру̏да, гру̏два, grȕda, grȕdva (“clod, lump; snowball”), Armenian կորկոտ (korkot, “groats of wheat or barley”), Sanskrit घर्षति (gharṣati, “to brush, polish, rub”). Related to grit. Doublet of gross.
The modern pronunciation shows an irregular change of Early Modern English /ɛː/ to /eɪ/ in the standard language; contrast this with the development of other words such as beat and heat.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Large in space; of much size; big; immense; enormous; expanded; --opposed to small and little; as, a great house, ship, farm, plain, distance, length.
  2. adjective Large in number; numerous; as, a great company, multitude, series, etc.
  3. noun The whole.; the gross; as, a contract to build a ship by the great.

Etymology [OE. gret, great, AS. gret; akin to OS. & LG. grt, D. groot, OHG. grz, G. gross. Cf. Groat the coin.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “great”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details

Sanskrit

Sanskrit dictionary entries whose meaning includes “great” (best matches first).

All 1040 Sanskrit matches →