cyclopean
adjective
sī-ˈklō-pē-
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The Cyclopes of Greek mythology were huge, crude giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Odysseus and his men had a terrible encounter with a Cyclops, and escaped utter disaster only by stabbing a burning stick into the monster's eye. The great stone walls at such ancient sites as Troy and Mycenae are called cyclopean because the stones are so massive and the construction (which uses no cement) is so expert that it was assumed that only a superhuman race such as the Cyclopes could have achieved such a feat.
Synonyms
- astronomical
- astronomic
- Brobdingnagian
- bumper
- colossal
- cosmic
- cosmical
- elephantine
- enormous
- galactic
- gargantuan
- giant
- gigantesque
- gigantic
- grand
- herculean
- heroic
- heroical
- Himalayan
- huge
- humongous
- humungous
- immense
- jumbo
- king-size
- king-sized
- leviathan
- mammoth
- massive
- mega
- mighty
- monster
- monstrous
- monumental
- mountainous
- oceanic
- pharaonic
- planetary
- prodigious
- super
- super-duper
- supersize
- supersized
- titanic
- tremendous
- vast
- vasty
- walloping
- whacking
- whopping
Examples of cyclopean in a Sentence
CNN, 19 Jan. 2022
The wall was built with a range of construction techniques, including cyclopean masonry.
—Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Aug. 2021
If a mutation causes sonic hedgehog activity to become too muted, the result can be a birth defect called holoprosencephaly, marked in the most extreme cases by a head with a single, cyclopean eye.
—George Johnson, Discover Magazine, 16 Sep. 2013
Rachmaninoff’s humbling presence, re-encountered, is gigantic, cyclopean.
—Joseph Horowitz, WSJ, 17 Sep. 2018
Vividly monumental aggregates of cyclopean arches, inverted pyramids, louvered domes, layered patterns and saturated colors—this is not the rigidly principled modernism of Le Corbusier or the inviolate geometry of Louis Kahn.
—Julie V. Iovine, WSJ, 22 Feb. 2017
Of course, the short, goggled and sometimes cyclopean minions are on hand, engaging in a prison food fight and dancing in a cancan-like production number. Innocuous pandemonium ensues in candy colors.
—Andy Webster, New York Times, 29 June 2017
Iran, Syria, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq—in a Cyclopean cellar wrapped in near-total darkness.
—Ali Arkady, Smithsonian, 2 May 2017
Dictionary Entries Near cyclopean
Cite this Entry
“Cyclopean.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cyclopean. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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