Adjective

(en-adj)

(US, slang) Disgusting.

Coarse, rude, vulgar, obscene, or impure.

* 1874 : Dodsley et al., A Select Collection of Old English Plays

But man to know God is a difficulty, except by a mean he himself inure, which is to know God’s creatures that be: at first them that be of the grossest nature, and then [...] them that be more pure.

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross . Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion—or rather as a transition from the subject that started their conversation—such talk had been distressingly out of place.}}

Great, large, bulky, or fat.

* 2013 , (Hilary Mantel), ‘Royal Bodies’, London Review of Books , 35.IV:

He collected a number of injuries that stopped him jousting, and then in middle age became stout, eventually gross .

Great, serious, flagrant, or shameful.

The whole amount; entire; total before any deductions.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.}}

Not sensitive in perception or feeling; dull; witless.

* Milton

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear.

Adjective

(en-adj)

Very large or wide (literally or figuratively).

The Sahara desert is vast .

There is a vast difference between them.

Very great in size, amount, degree, intensity, or especially extent.

* {{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April

, author=Anna Lena Phillips , title=Sneaky Silk Moths , volume=100, issue=2, page=172 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.}}

(obsolete) Waste; desert; desolate; lonely.

* William Shakespeare, the Life and Death of Richard the Third Act I, scene IV:

the empty, vast , and wandering air