English
huge
Huge comes from Middle English huge, from Old French ahuge ‘high, great’, of unknown origin.
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400ahuge1‘high, lofty, great’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500huge1‘huge’
- Englishearliest quotation 1907huge1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English huge
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1907, Robert William Chambers, New York: ““I don't mean all of your friends—only a small…”.
Lineage
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400ahugeWiktionary, English huge‘high, lofty, great’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500hugeWiktionary, English huge‘huge’
- Englishearliest quotation 1907hugeWiktionary, English huge. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1907, Robert William Chambers, New York: ““I don't mean all of your friends—only a small…”
The story
One theory derives it from an underlying Old French a hoge (‘at height’), from a (‘at, to’) + hoge (‘a hill, height’), the latter from Frankish *haug or cognate Old Norse haugr (‘hill’); both from Proto-Germanic *haugaz (‘hill, mound’), from Proto-Indo-European *kowkós (‘hill, mound’), from the root Proto-Indo-European *kewk-, whence also English high.disputed Scholars disagree here; the competing view is quoted as the source gives it.
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with huge, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *kewk- ‘to bend’
6 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
adj Very large.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “huge”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Old French ahuge / huge