All 21 Uses of

prodigious

in

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Consequently, it must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon toughness—plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to withdraw itself by a backward motion truly inexplicable.†
Chpt 1

And indeed, unless this reef had an engine in its belly, how could it move about with such prodigious speed?†
Chpt 1

I repeat: opinion had crystallized as to the nature of this phenomenon, and the public accepted without argument the existence of a prodigious creature that had nothing in common with the fabled sea serpent.†
Chpt 1

The frigate sailed along the east coast of South America with prodigious speed.†
Chpt 1

It's easy enough to accept that prodigious things can come from our Creator.†
Chpt 1

What mechanical force allowed it to move about with such prodigious speed?†
Chpt 1

"But this sea, Professor Aronnax," he told me, "this prodigious, inexhaustible wet nurse of a sea not only feeds me, she dresses me as well.†
Chpt 1

The sea is simply the vehicle for a prodigious, unearthly mode of existence; it's simply movement and love; it's living infinity, as one of your poets put it.†
Chpt 1

I undo the bolts holding the skiff to the submersible, and the longboat rises with prodigious speed to the surface of the sea.†
Chpt 1

The Nautilus's pumps have prodigious strength, as you must have noticed when their waterspouts swept like a torrent over the Abraham Lincoln.†
Chpt 1

If we accept the hypotheses of the microbiologist Ehrenberg—who believes that these underwater depths are lit up by phosphorescent organisms—nature has certainly saved one of her most prodigious sights for residents of the sea, and I could judge for myself from the thousandfold play of the light.†
Chpt 1

Conseil and I were soon dressed in these diving suits, as were Captain Nemo and one of his companions—a herculean type who must have been prodigiously strong.†
Chpt 1 *

prodigiously = enormously; or with a magnitude or degree that is far beyond what is usual

The open-sea plants had already left behind the increasingly arid seafloor, where a prodigious number of animals were still swarming: zoophytes, articulates, mollusks, and fish.†
Chpt 1

paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers are thought to b†
Chpt 2

Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature's creative powers are greater than man's destructive instincts.†
Chpt 2

Bracing himself, he waited for the fearsome man-eater with wonderful composure, and when the latter rushed at him, the captain leaped aside with prodigious quickness, avoided a collision, and sank his dagger into its belly.†
Chpt 2

As for the local fauna, it included thousands of crustaceans of every type: lobsters, hermit crabs, prawns, mysid shrimps, daddy longlegs, rock crabs, and a prodigious number of seashells, such as cowries, murex snails, and limpets.†
Chpt 2

The panels in the lounge opened, and maneuvers began for reaching those strata so prodigiously far removed.†
Chpt 2

prodigiously = enormously; or with a magnitude or degree that is far beyond what is usual

In four minutes it had cleared the four vertical leagues separating it from the surface of the ocean, and after emerging like a flying fish, it fell back into the sea, making the waves leap to prodigious heights.†
Chpt 2

They're eaten in prodigious quantities, and without the astonishing fertility of these fish, the seas would soon be depopulated of them.†
Chpt 2

It left this place of devastation with prodigious speed, 100 feet beneath the waters.†
Chpt 2

Definition:

enormous; or far beyond what is usual in magnitude or degree