Word.ws English Dictionary

larger than life

larger than life adjective: of greater size or magnitude than is naturally or normally the case; of larger size than life-size.

Adjective

larger than life (comparative form only)

  1. (comparative-only) Of greater size or magnitude than is naturally or normally the case; of larger size than life-size.
    • Miss Snevellicci's papa looked very big indeed—several sizes larger than life.1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 30, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC
    • At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes of humiliation and despair.1849, Herman Melville, “With His Prosy Old Guide-book, He Takes a Prosy Stroll”, in Redburn: His First Voyage. […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 197
  2. (comparative-only, figuratively, usually) Very imposing, renowned, or impressively influential.
    • I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light / He's gotta be sure and it's gotta be soon / And he's gotta be larger than life1984, Jim Steinman, Dean Pitchford, “Holding Out for a Hero”, performed by Bonnie Tyler
    • This is a person of surpassing integrity; a man of the utmost sincerity; somewhat larger than life, perhaps.1988 January 3, Joyce Carol Oates, “Intellectual Seduction”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Examples of larger than life in a sentence

  • And the next time / That I saw you / You were larger than life / You came and you conquered / You were doing alright1996, Ani DiFranco, “Napoleon”, in Dilate:
  • He was uncompromising, larger than life and irreplaceable.2023 November 21, David Streitfeld, “The Long Shadow of Steve Jobs Looms Over the Turmoil at OpenAI”, in The New York Times:

Synonyms of larger than life

Forms of larger than life

alternative formlarger-than-life

Questions about larger than life

What does larger than life mean?
Larger than life means of greater size or magnitude than is naturally or normally the case; of larger size than life-size.
How do you use larger than life in a sentence?
And the next time / That I saw you / You were larger than life / You came and you conquered / You were doing alright
What part of speech is larger than life?
Larger than life is an adjective.

Words near larger than life in the dictionary

  1. larger
  2. larger bindweed
  3. larger bindweeds
  4. larger Pacific striped octopus
  5. larger Pacific striped octopuses
  6. larger than life
  7. larger-hearted
  8. larger-scale
  9. larger-sized
  10. larger-than-life
  11. larges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: larger than life (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-larger than life.ogg.

Cite this entry: “larger than life.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/larger_than_life. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.