Meaning & use
monumental work
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Meanings
nouncountable
a very large and important piece of creative or scholarly work that took great effort.
Grammar: Countable: use 'a' with the singular and '-s' for the plural, as in 'a monumental work' or 'three monumental works'.
Patterns
- a monumental work of something
- produce a monumental work
- a monumental work on something
Her biography of the painter is a monumental work of more than nine hundred pages.
The cathedral itself is a monumental work that took four generations to finish.
He spent thirty years on a monumental work about the history of the region.
nounsingularfigurative
a job or task that is extremely difficult and takes a very long time to complete.
Grammar: Usually singular and often used after 'be' or 'prove': 'Cleaning the whole site proved a monumental work.'
Patterns
- prove a monumental work
- be a monumental work for someone
Rebuilding the bridge was a monumental work, and it took the whole town two years.
Getting the archive online was a monumental work for such a small team.
Word forms
| plural | monumental works |
|---|
Common combinations
- a monumental work of art
- The gallery has just bought a monumental work of art from the 1920s.
- a monumental work of scholarship
- Her dictionary is a monumental work of scholarship that took forty years.
- a monumental achievement
- Landing people on the moon was a monumental achievement for science.
- a monumental task
- Sorting the family papers turned out to be a monumental task.
- a monumental sculpture
- A monumental sculpture now stands at the entrance to the park.
Synonyms and how they differ
- masterpiece
- A masterpiece is a work of the highest quality; a monumental work stresses great size and effort as much as quality.
- magnum opus
- Magnum opus is more formal and means a person's single greatest work, while a monumental work can simply be one very large project among several.
- epic
- Epic is used mainly for long stories, poems, or films; a monumental work also covers scholarship, buildings, and other huge tasks.
Opposites
Word family
- monument noun
- a structure such as a statue or building put up to remember a person or event.
- monumental adjective
- very large, impressive, or important.
- monumentally adverb
- in an extremely large or great way, often before an adjective.
Commonly confused: monumental work or momentous?
monumental work vs momentous
Momentous means very important because of its effects on the future, as in 'a momentous decision'; monumental work is about size, effort, and lasting value, not about consequences.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'monumental work' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Monumental work' suits a huge, serious project such as a six-volume study, so option 2 fits. Option 1 is too small and everyday for such a grand phrase, option 3 contradicts the idea of great effort and time, and option 4 wrongly uses the phrase for a person or a routine cleaning job.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “monumental work”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.