GREAT. adj. A relative word, denoting largeness of quantity, number, &c. serving to augment the value of those terms with which it is combined, and opposed to small or little. The principal circumstances in which this word can be employed are the following:
when we say, that Socrates was a great man, we do not mean that he was a man of great size, but that he was a man who excelled in the endowments of the mind. The terms which denote largeness of size in the human body are, big, bulky, huge, &c.