Leviathan
noun /lɪˈvaɪ.ə.θən/ — A thing of immense size or power
Definition
A massive sea monster of biblical origin — or any thing of enormous power and size: a vast organisation, an overwhelming force, an institution that moves slowly but cannot be stopped.
Beyond the definition
The word for power too large to see whole. A leviathan is not just big — it is big in a way that makes your scale of measurement feel irrelevant.
Origin & history
From Hebrew 'livyathan' — a coiled sea creature mentioned in Job, Psalms, and Isaiah. Thomas Hobbes used it as the title of his work on the state: the sovereign power as sea-monster.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
The corporation had become a leviathan — profitable, unstoppable, and entirely indifferent to individual lives.
The tanker passed slowly — a leviathan that made the smaller vessels rock in its wake without noticing them.
Hobbes' Leviathan argued that only a sovereign monster could keep human monsters in check.
Synonyms
behemoth, giant, colossus, titan, juggernaut
Antonyms
minnow, pygmy
Related words
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Illustrative example
Surfacing Massive Sea Mammals
Several whales surface together in the open sea, their massive bodies and scale creating an overwhelming force in the water.
A leviathan is a massive sea monster or, figuratively, a vast organization or institution. The whales surfacing as a group embody this concept of enormous power and scale; they represent a force that is vast and overwhelming, acting as a natural visual analogy for any entity that moves with slow, unstoppable mass.
Image credit: Ocean Observatories Initiative · Public domain (license)
Resized and converted to WebP; displayed with a fitted crop.