Brobdingnagian

A word of Jonathan Swift's coinage, Brobdingnagian is an adjective derived from the country of Brobdingnag in the literary work Gulliver's Travels. The inhabitants of the land are giants, and so the adjectival form used in everyday (perhaps) vocabulary describes phenomena which are "immense; enormous" (AHD).

The spelling of the country, however, is a matter of some discussion.  In the preface to the 1735 edition of the work, Swift published a "letter" from Gulliver to "his cousin Sympson." This letter serves as something of a preface, with its chief purpose being to correct some egregious errors made in earlier printings. One such error is the spelling of "Brogdingrag (for so the Word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag)."

A critic, one John R. Clark, makes the claim that the rough translation of this word (whichever way one spells it, but at this time it seems Brobdingnag is more universally accepted) is "England." In the majority of the illustrations and maps invented for this country is the north western portion of the United States, even the entirety of the U.S.A. represented as Brobdingnag. It is thus interesting that England should be considered the non-fictional reality of the fictional country. (Not having Clark's book on hand I am unable to read his argument in its entirety.)

First Image Source: http://theverbistobe.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/bgiant.jpg

Second Image Source: http://www.lqart.org/illustfold/gulliver/gultrav.html

Information on the text: http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/dict/b.html