MARVELLOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does marvellous mean? 

• MARVELLOUS (adjective)
  The adjective MARVELLOUS has 3 senses:

1. extraordinarily good or great; used especially as intensifiers

2. being or having the character of a miracle

3. too improbable to admit of belief

  Familiarity information: MARVELLOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MARVELLOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Extraordinarily good or great; used especially as intensifiers

Synonyms:

fantastic; grand; howling; marvellous; marvelous; rattling; terrific; tremendous; wonderful; wondrous

Context example:

a tremendous achievement

Similar:

extraordinary (beyond what is ordinary or usual; highly unusual or exceptional or remarkable)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Being or having the character of a miracle

Synonyms:

marvellous; marvelous; miraculous

Similar:

supernatural (not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material)

Derivation:

marvel (something that causes feelings of wonder)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Too improbable to admit of belief

Synonyms:

improbable; marvellous; marvelous; tall

Context example:

a tall story

Similar:

incredible; unbelievable (beyond belief or understanding)

 Context examples 

And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

"It is a most marvellous happening," Singletree, Darnley & Co. wrote Martin, a critical philosophic essay selling like a novel.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvellous.”

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Buck’s marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

But it was the mystery of Keesh's marvellous hunting that took chief place in all their minds.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

If he had never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance, the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor pulled it out of his pocket, and began.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But, then, Champion Harrison told me how the fighting-men lived there, and my father how the heads of the Navy lived there, and my mother how her brother and his grand friends were there, until at last I was consumed with impatience to see this marvellous heart of England.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)