Huge is a concept that comes from the Latin word ingens . It is an adjective that qualifies what is very big.
The term is generally used in reference to a bulky quantity. For example: "The huge influx of protesters did not stop all day" , "The club disbursed a huge sum of money to hire the young promise of Turkish football" , "This software allows you to analyze a huge volume of data in a few seconds ” .
When something is of enormous magnitude, it is classified as enormous. An art expert, to cite one case, may mention the “enormous cultural value ” of a certain collection of paintings. With this expression, the specialist highlights the importance of these works for culture.
The president of a country, for his part, can attribute the macroeconomic problems of his nation to the “huge external debt” whose origin has more than a century. The president assures that, as long as that debt is not renegotiated and a withdrawal is agreed with the creditors, the national economic situation will continue to be complex.
After a terrible earthquake, a city is in ruins. Thousands of buildings are destroyed and the infrastructure is seriously damaged. Faced with this situation, the local government and the inhabitants have a “huge work” ahead of them to achieve reconstruction: this means that they will have to dedicate a lot of time and effort to recovery tasks.
As you can see, this term is not very common in everyday speech, but we usually find it in the press and in literature. In any case, its meaning is known to a large portion of the population, especially those who read the news and who like literature.
All of them refer to a large size, which is the only meaning that the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy offers us for this word. Regarding its etymology, we do not find much information other than its mere composition: at the beginning the prefix in- is located, which serves to denote negation or deprivation, in addition to "inward"; next, there is the Latin term gens , which can be translated as "produce, engender", but which is also understood as "people" in the sense of plurality or size.
Having seen its synonyms, we can mention two of its antonyms: negligible and insignificant . In short, it is clear that a huge task entails a great effort, since size cannot be understood literally or materially, as if we were talking about an object, but rather the difficulty of meeting a certain objective. In fact, it is common that the enormous cannot be solved by a single action, but by a strategy that brings together two or more.
If we turn our attention once again to the example of the ruined city, whose level of destruction can only be reversed with great effort, through enormous work, we understand that it is not a matter of one or two actions, but of a plan of action. recovery consisting of several well-organized tasks. Only medical care for citizens, which should be the priority, is a complex job; But then comes the collection of the rubble, the demolition of the buildings that have been left in an impossible state to restore and finally the reconstruction of the city, among many other complementary goals.