Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Very great in size, extent, or quantity. synonym: enormous.
  • adjective Very great in scope or import.
  • noun An immense space.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Wide and vacant or unoccupied; waste; desolate; lonely.
  • Being of great extent or size; very spacious or large; enormous; massive; immense.
  • Very great in quantity, number, or amount.
  • Very great as to degree, intensity, difficulty of accomplishment, importance, etc.; mighty: used also in exaggerated colloquial speech, being much affected in the eighteenth century.
  • Synonyms Spacious.
  • 3 and Colossal, gigantic, prodigious, tremendous, stupendous.
  • noun A boundless waste or space; immensity.
  • noun A great deal; a large quantity or number.
  • noun The darkness of night, in which the prospect is not bounded in by distinct objects: only in the following passage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A waste region; boundless space; immensity.
  • adjective obsolete Waste; desert; desolate; lonely.
  • adjective Of great extent; very spacious or large; also, huge in bulk; immense; enormous.
  • adjective Very great in numbers, quantity, or amount.
  • adjective Very great in force; mighty.
  • adjective Very great in importance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Very large or wide (literally or figuratively).
  • adjective Very great in size, amount, degree, intensity, or especially extent.
  • noun poetic A vast space.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective unusually great in size or amount or degree or especially extent or scope

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin vāstus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin vastus ("void, immense").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word vast.

Examples

  • Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase "vast majority" used twice were pretty vague, and because I hadn't seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told, but it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement.

    Mike Lux: The Great Task Force and Settlement Debate Mike Lux 2012

  • Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase "vast majority" used twice were pretty vague, and because I hadn't seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told, but it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement.

    Mike Lux: The Great Task Force and Settlement Debate Mike Lux 2012

  • Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase "vast majority" used twice were pretty vague, and because I hadn't seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told, but it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement.

    Mike Lux: The Great Task Force and Settlement Debate Mike Lux 2012

  • Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase "vast majority" used twice were pretty vague, and because I hadn't seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told, but it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement.

    Mike Lux: The Great Task Force and Settlement Debate Mike Lux 2012

  • Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase "vast majority" used twice were pretty vague, and because I hadn't seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told, but it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement.

    Mike Lux: The Great Task Force and Settlement Debate Mike Lux 2012

  • Minow coined the phrase "vast wasteland" in 1961, he was referring to television.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • The English word vast is derived from the Sanskrit vas, so Vasudeva also means that vast and all-encompassing Supreme Being within whom all other beings are contained.

    Spiritual Teachings of the Avatar Jeffrey Armstrong 2010

  • The English word vast is derived from the Sanskrit vas, so Vasudeva also means that vast and all-encompassing Supreme Being within whom all other beings are contained.

    Spiritual Teachings of the Avatar Jeffrey Armstrong 2010

  • The English word vast is derived from the Sanskrit vas, so Vasudeva also means that vast and all-encompassing Supreme Being within whom all other beings are contained.

    Spiritual Teachings of the Avatar Jeffrey Armstrong 2010

  • I'd like to blame the French toast, the mocha lattes, the pizza, and what I call the vast buffalo wing conspiracy.

    Joel Schwartzberg: Avoid New Year's PREsolutions 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.