Adjective

(en adjective)

Of or pertaining to Brobdingnag.

(figuratively) Enormous, huge, far larger than is customary for such a thing.

* 1899 , Israel Zangwill, "They that Walk in Darkness": Ghetto Tragedies (page 289)

When, at the head-centre, the lady demonstrator, armed with a Brobdingnagian whalebone needle, threaded with a bright red cord, executed herringboned fantasias on a canvas frame resembling a violin stand, it all looked easy enough.

* 1907 , , "Glamour" in His Own People ,

The two men followed Madame de Vaurigard into a square hall, hung with tapestries and lit by two candles of a Brobdingnagian species Mellin had heretofore seen only in cathedrals.

* 2010 , (Christopher Hitchens), Hitch-22 , Atlantic 2011, p. 52:

Again I stress the matter of sheer scale: the teachers were enormous compared to us and this lent a Brobdingnagian aspect to the scene.

Adjective

(en-adj)

repellently frightful and shocking; horrific or ghastly

* 1912 : (Edgar Rice Burroughs), (Tarzan of the Apes), Chapter 6

In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and moldered remnants of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar gruesome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle near-by was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=May 04 , title=Bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead citation , passage=Jay Carney said that the US was considering whether to release photos of bin Laden after he was killed on Sunday but that the photos were gruesome and could be inflammatory.}}