embiggen

English

Etymology

em- + big + -en. Ad-hoc coinage, attested in 1884.

Pronunciation

• (RP) IPA: /ɛmˈbɪɡə̆n/

Verb

embiggen (third-person singular simple present embiggens, present participle embiggening, simple past and past participle embiggened)

1. (nonce word) To make or become bigger.
   • 1884, C.A. Ward, "New Verbs", in Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc, volume 10, page 135:

     Are there not, however, barbarous verbs in all languages? ἀλλ' ἐμεγάλυνεν αυτοὺς ὁ λαός, but the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything.

   • 1996, Dan Greaney, The Simpsons, episode 3F13: “Lisa the Iconoclast”, credits, beneath the statue of Jebediah Springfield:

     A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.

   • 2006 November 22, Riccardo Argurio, Matteo Bertolini, Sebastián Franco, and Shamit Kachru, Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking, published 2007 January 23, pages 24^{1} and 26^{2}:

     ^{1} For large P, the three-form fluxes are dilute, and the gradient of the Myers potential encouraging an anti-D3 to embiggen is very mild.

     ^{2} While in both cases for P anti-D3-branes the probe approximation is clearly not good, in the set up of this paper we could argue that there is a competing effect which can overcome the desire of the anti-D3s to embiggen, namely their attraction towards the wrapped D5s.

Synonyms

• (make or become bigger): enlarge, expand, increase, magnify; swell, aggrandize, bigger

Antonyms

• (make or become bigger): ensmallen, shrink, diminish, contract

Translations

Make bigger

Dutch: vergroten (nl) Esperanto: grandigi (eo) Finnish: suurentaa (fi) French: agrandir (fr), grandir (fr), accroître (fr)

German: vergrößern (de) Polish: powiększyć (pl), powiększać (pl) Portuguese: engrandecer (pt) Spanish: engrandecer (es)