prodigious

IPA/prəˈdɪdʒəs/
KK[prədˈɪdʒəs]IPA/prəˈdɪdʒəs/

prodigious — adjective

  • prodigiouspositive
  • more prodigiouscomparative
  • most prodigioussuperlative

1. If something is prodigious, it is surprisingly large, powerful, or skilful — muc

1.adjectiveC1
Definition

If something is prodigious, it is surprisingly large, powerful, or skilful — much more so than what people normally see or expect.

Example

Zola, a young pianist, showed a prodigious talent that amazed the audience.

prodigious + talent (noun collocation for ability)

The Watanabe family saved a prodigious amount of money by growing their own vegetables.

prodigious amount of [noun]

Common collocations
  • prodigious talent
  • prodigious amount
  • prodigious effort
  • prodigious memory
  • prodigious collection
  • prodigious appetite
  • prodigious feat
Synonyms
  • enormous

    focuses purely on physical size; prodigious also covers skill and figurative greatness

  • remarkable

    less intense; remarkable means 'worth noticing' while prodigious means 'shockingly great'

  • phenomenal

    very similar but more common in informal speech; prodigious is more literary and formal

  • colossal

    emphasises huge size specifically, unlike prodigious which also applies to talent or memory

Antonyms
  • tiny

    small in size

  • modest

    unremarkable or average in amount or scale

Grammar Patterns

prodigious + noun (talent, amount, memory, effort)

be + prodigious

Usage Note

Commonly used before nouns such as talent, memory, effort, amount, or collection to emphasise how surprisingly great they are. It is more formal than words like 'huge' or 'amazing' and appears most often in written English and formal speeches.

Common Mistakes

My younger sister is a prodigious.
My younger sister is a prodigy.
Prodigious is an adjective; the noun form is prodigy (a highly talented person).
The cake my aunt baked was prodigious.' (if meaning 'delicious')
My aunt baked a prodigious amount of cake for the party.
Prodigious describes size, amount, or skill, not flavour or quality.

2. Something that is prodigious seems to be a sign or warning of something importan

2.adjectiveC2
Definition

Something that is prodigious seems to be a sign or warning of something important or bad that is going to happen later.

Example

The deep red clouds seemed to Niran like a prodigious sign of trouble ahead.

prodigious + sign + of (collocation for warning)

The storyteller spoke of a prodigious silence that fell over the village before the flood.

Common collocations
  • prodigious sign
  • prodigious silence
  • prodigious omen
  • prodigious warning
Synonyms
  • ominous

    more common in everyday use; prodigious in this sense is older and more literary

  • portentous

    nearly identical in meaning; portentous is slightly more frequent in modern writing

  • foreboding

    describes a feeling rather than a thing; 'a foreboding silence' vs. 'a prodigious silence'

Grammar Patterns

be + prodigious (of something)

prodigious + sign / silence / atmosphere

Usage Note

Rarer and mainly literary; often describes natural phenomena such as clouds, silences, sounds, or atmospheric conditions that feel like warnings of future events. In modern everyday English this sense is much less common than sense 1.

Common Mistakes

The prodigious clouds meant good weather tomorrow.
The prodigious clouds seemed to warn of a coming storm.
Sense 2 implies an ominous or significant warning, never a neutral or positive prediction.

Word family

  • prodigy
    nounB2
  • prodigiously
    adverbC1
  • prodigiousness
    nounC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

All four words describe something impressively large or great, but they differ in scope and register. "Enormous" and "colossal" refer almost exclusively to physical size — an enormous building or a colossal statue. "Remarkable" is broader and milder: anything worth noticing (a remarkable coincidence, a remarkable improvement) can be remarkable, but it lacks the sense of awe that prodigious carries. "Phenomenal" is the closest synonym in modern English; it shares prodigious's implication of something so great it surprises people, but it is more common in informal speech and sports journalism (a phenomenal goal). Prodigious sits at the formal, literary end of the scale and pairs naturally with abstract nouns like talent, memory, and effort as well as physical size. For example, you might say 'Einstein had a prodigious intellect' (formal, admiring) but 'LeBron James had a phenomenal game last night' (informal, enthusiastic).

enormous ↗remarkable ↗phenomenal ↗colossal ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

Adverbs

Phrases

  • prodigious in size
  • prodigious in scope
  • of prodigious proportions

Prepositions

Etymology

LatinFrenchEnglish

Prodigious comes from the Latin word prodigiosus, meaning 'strange, marvelous, unnatural,' which itself comes from prodigium, meaning 'omen' or 'portent.' In earlier English the word carried a strong sense of something unnatural that served as a warning — the meaning now preserved in sense 2. Over time the sense broadened: anything that awed or amazed people, even in a positive way, could be called prodigious, and eventually the word settled on its modern use for something impressively great in size, ability, or degree.

First known use

15th century

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 3b