Herculean

//hɜːɹˈkjuːliən// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of extraordinary might, power, size, etc.; suggesting Hercules in size or strength.

    "But this is not the best:—look, pr'ythee, Charmian, / How this Herculean Roman does become / The carriage of his chafe."

  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of Herculean. alt-of

    "Still there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task, because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which require almost super-human powers."

  3. 3
    Requiring a huge amount of work; of extraordinary difficulty.

    "a Herculean labour"

Adjective
  1. 1
    extremely difficult; requiring the strength of a Hercules wordnet
  2. 2
    displaying superhuman strength or power wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
difficultabstruseabysmalantaeanarduousastronomic

Example

More examples

"I finally pulled myself together and made a Herculean effort to improve my sock situation: I bought 15 pairs of identical black socks, and threw away my old ones."

Etymology

From Hercules + -an.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.