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awesome

adj
/ˈɔː.səm/UK/ˈɔ.səm/US/ˈɑ.səm/

Etymology

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 original meaning it has tended to be replaced by the related word, awe-inspiring.

  1. derived from *h₂egʰ-✻
  2. derived from *agaz✻ — “terror, dread”
  3. derived from agi
  4. inherited from aw
  5. suffixed as awesome — “awe + some”

Definitions

  1. Causing awe or terror

    Causing awe or terror; inspiring wonder or excitement.

    • The waterfall in the middle of the rainforest was an awesome sight.
    • The tsunami was awesome in its destructive power.
    • And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the impersonal, but, to my mind, rather awesome title of She.

  2. Excellent, exciting, remarkable.

    • That was awesome!
    • Awesome, dude!
    • Awesome! Totally awesome! All right, Hamilton!

  3. Clipping of awesomeness (“the quality, state, or essence of being awesome”).

    • pure awesome
    • made of awesome
    • Plus, her patent leather boots were made of awesome. They made her legs look longer and leaner.
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. A person who is awesome.

      • When an awesome is dreadful and making even the living of a common person miserable then someone from the community must stand up to resist the dreadful and check the excesses.
      • “Or as I like to think of it, the wusses versus the awesomes.”

The neighborhood

Derived

awesomazing, awesomely, awesomeness, awesomenessness, awesomeosity, awesome sauce, awesometastic, awesomitude, gnarlsome, unawesome

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for awesome. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA