a. [f. COLOSS-US + -AL: cf. mod.F. colossal. Added to Johnson by Todd in 1818, as a word ‘of recent date’: its earlier synonyms were colossean, colossian, colossic.] Like a colossus, of vast size, gigantic, huge: a. of a statue or human figure.
1712. J. James, trans. Le Blond’s Gardening, 76. Figures … bigger than the Life, called Colossal.
1775. Mason, in Gray’s Corr. (1843), 165. His greater, his colossal friend Dr. Johnson.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., II. 16. On the summit of the pillar … stood the colossal statue of Apollo.
1860. Kingsley, Misc., II. 255. Colossal crumbling idols.
1882. Hinsdale, Garfield & Educ., II. 414. Her head that would have appeared colossal but for its symmetry.
fig. 1843. Lytton, Last Bar., I. i. A man who stood colossal amidst the iron images of the Age.
1852. Tennyson, Ode Death Wellington, viii. Let his great example stand Colossal, seen of every land.
1878. Gladstone, Prim. Homer, 19. In competition with the colossal figure of Achilles.
b. of anything vast or gigantic in its scope, sphere, extent or amount.
1832. trans. Sismondi’s Ital. Rep., xiv. 316. Their fortune, formerly colossal, was dissipated in their long exile.
1855. H. Reed, Lect. Eng. Lit., vii. (1878), 240. Dr. Johnson’s colossal work, the … Dictionary.
1874. Bancroft, Footpr. Time, i. 58. Thebes was a colossal capital.
1881. Nature, XXV. 88. This eruption was the most colossal one ever recorded in Hawaii.
