great

Adjective

great (comparative greater, superlative greatest)

1. 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.[…]”1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
   • ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
   1. Much, more than usual.
      • great worry
      • “We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?”1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
   2. (UK, informal) Intensifying a word or expression, used in mild oaths.
      • a dirty great smack in the face
      • Great Scott!
2. (informal) Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic.
   • Dinner was great.
   • He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights,[…], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
3. Important, consequential.
   • a great dilemma
   • a great decision
4. (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).
   • great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather
5. (obsolete, postpositional) Pregnant; large with young; full of.
   • great with child
   • great with hope
6. (obsolete, except with ‘friend’ and similar words such as ‘mate’, ‘buddy’) Intimate; familiar.
   • those that are so great with him1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Followers and Friends”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC
7. (applied to actions, thoughts and feelings) Arising from or possessing idealism; admirable; commanding; illustrious; eminent.
   • a great deed
   • a great nature
8. Impressive or striking.
   • a great show of wealth
9. Much in use; favoured.
   • Poetry was a great convention of the Romantic era.
10. (applied to persons) Of much talent or achievements.
    • a great hero, scholar, genius, philosopher, writer, etc.
11. Doing or exemplifying (a characteristic or pursuit) on a large scale; active or enthusiastic.
    • What a great buffoon!
    • He’s not a great one for reading.

Interjection

1. Expression of gladness and content about something.
   • Great! Thanks for the wonderful work.
   • —I am in my new apartment! —Great!2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)
2. 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.

Noun

great (plural greats)

1. A person of major significance, accomplishment or acclaim.
   • Newton and Einstein are two of the greats of the history of science.
   • Sadio Mané wasted a glorious chance in the first half and, late on, Mohamed Salah turned his shot against a post after a goal-line clearance had spun his way. That, in a nutshell, perhaps sums up the difference between Messi and the players on the next rung below – the ones who can be described as...2019 May 1, Daniel Taylor, The Guardian
2. The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.
3. (usually) An instance of the word great signifying an additional generation in phrases expressing family relationships.
   • my three-greats grandmother
4. (informal, rare) A great-grandparent.
   • I knew my great-gran, but no one really believed the Montez story until we saw photos of the sinous dancer. My great was the spiitng^([sic]) image of HER great.1999 August 25, Christopher Jahn, “Something about Today...”, in alt.callahans (Usenet), archived from the original on 09 Jul 2026
   • On my Ma's side, I have a whole lotta Scot (Ferguson), with some Irish, and her maternal gandpa^([sic]) (my great) was from Trieste, so also Italian-Austrian-Slovenian.2002 April 4, John Shafto, “Ethnic origin of Alex”, in alt.music.rush (Usenet), archived from the original on 09 Jul 2026

Adverb

great (not comparable)

1. (informal) Very well (in a very satisfactory manner).
   • Those mechanical colored pencils work great because they don’t have to be sharpened.