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Glite Dictionary
giantess

giantess

1 8.2
A very large woman in old stories or fairy tales
  • noun
  • /ˈdʒaɪəntɛs/
  • Literature
translation icon : giganta
  • The giantess towered over the village, her strength rumored to rival that of the fiercest warriors.

Examples

  • Odin then persuades his brother to help him bore a hole in the mountain in which Suttung lives, with his daughter, the beautiful giantess Gunnlodh.

    Academic text (1990)

  • I am the giantess of Times Square.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • This girl is a giantess.

    The Band Wagon (1953)

  • In my shelter that night, when the camp was silent, I tried my hand at making a drawing of the giantess.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Among those horrific creatures, there was the giantess.

    Blog text (8)

  • Her arms were all that kept her from being the giantess of my wildest fantasies.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • They were all so short that I felt like a great, clumsy giantess.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Kara the giantess had looked exactly like Nona herself; she had seen it in the picture in Angus's mind.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • She confronted us full-on, a giantess of blackened madder, so wonderfully carved she must have been the work of sorcery.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • In Wales, several prehistoric tombs and their boulder cairns are called Barclodiad y Gawres (the Giantess's Apronful).

    Academic text (1999)

Synonyms

giant
vsgiantess
  • Literature
153 2.3

A very large imaginary person in stories

is the female form, focusing specifically on a large mythic woman
Titaness
vsgiantess
  • Literature
1 9.9

A giant goddess from Greek myths who is a daughter of Uranus and Gaea

is a general mythic large woman not limited to Greek primordial figures

Surface Forms

giantess singular
giantesses plural

Morphology

giantess = giant (transparent) = giant + ess

The feminine suffix '-ess' is added to 'giant' to indicate a female giant, a direct and regular derivation understandable to learners.

Etymology

Giantess comes from giant, which means 'a very large person', plus the ending -ess, which means 'female' and appears in words like actress and princess. So a giantess is a female giant, an imaginary woman of great size often found in myths and fairy tales.