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Wikipedia Wiktionary Tumblr Wikisource YouTube Shop Featured: A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)

Brobdingnag is a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels occupied by giants. Lemuel Gulliver visits the land after the ship on which he is traveling is blown off course to an unknown land and he is separated from a party exploring the unknown land. More plot details can be found under A Voyage to Brobdingnag. The adjective Brobdingnagian has come to describe anything of colossal size.

"I must confess no Object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous Breast, which I cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious Reader an Idea of its Bulk, Shape and Colour. It stood prominent six Foot, and could not be less than sixteen in Circumference. The Nipple was about half the Bigness of my Head, and the Hew both of that and the Dug so varified with Spots, Pimples and Freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: For I had a near sight of her, she sitting down the more conveniently to give Suck, and I standing on the Table. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English Ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own Size, and their Defects not to be seen but through a Magnifying glass, where we find by Experiment that the smoothest and whitest Skins look rough and coarse, and ill coloured." --Part II. A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver's Travels