Monday, January 4, 2016

word choice - Large, huge or big communities?


When I talk about many people, like community, what should I use?



  • A large community

  • A huge community

  • A big community


In my native language (German), we use just one word for that: groß. What is the difference in English?



Answer




Per this NGram, large is far more common overall than big and huge put together, so in any context where you're not sure which word to use, treat large as the default.


Also note that parents normally introduce their children to big before large (probably because it seems phonetically simpler and more distinctive). So in later life people may see big as slightly childish/informal, where large appears more "grown-up"/formal.


I suggest avoiding huge unless you really want to emphasise abnormally large. But as @barbara says, there are many alternatives in that case (enormous, gigantic, vast etc.). It's also worth noting that in casual speech, people often use "quirky/unusual" alternatives such as humungous, ginormous, thumping. It's best to avoid those unless you're in company where you notice others doing it.




The only "rule" I can think of to help decide when it's better to choose big over large is that big becomes more likely in contexts which are more metaphorical (as opposed to "literal", when you're talking about the physical size of something).


Thus, there's nothing to choose between a big man and a large man, because that's simply the literal sense. But in...



That was big of him (he did something noble/generous).
It was a big disappointment (it was very disappointing).
He's just bigging himself up (he's trying to make himself appear more important than he really is).




... large would never be used. With OP's specific noun community, the metaphoric "stretch" isn't actually very great (large/big!), and there's really nothing to choose between large and big.


Of course, there will be plenty of exceptions to my above "rule" (as in the relatively recent BrE slang giving it large, being noisily aggressive). So just think of it as a "slight tendency".


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