Origins
The English adjective 'great' has traveled a remarkable semantic distance from its origins. It descends from Old English 'grēat,' which meant 'big, tall, thick, stout, coarse-grained' — primarily a word of physical description, not evaluation. The Old English 'grēat' came from Proto-Germanic *grautaz, meaning 'coarse' or 'thick-grained,' a form closely related to Proto-Germanic *grūtą, the ancestor of English 'groats' (coarsely hulled grain). The etymological core of 'great' is texture and bulk: something great was something coarse, grainy, and therefore large.
This physical origin is still visible in a few surviving expressions. 'Great with child,' meaning heavily pregnant, preserves the Old English sense of physical bigness. The compound 'great-hearted' originally described someone with a literally large heart before it became a metaphor for courage and generosity. But by the Middle English period, the word was already shifting from physical size toward abstract importance, a transition documented in texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The Proto-Germanic cognates confirm the word's physical origins. Dutch 'groot' means 'large' or 'great' and serves as the primary word for bigness in that language. German took a different path: 'groß' (from the same root) means 'large,' but the evaluative sense of 'great' is usually expressed by 'großartig' (literally 'great-natured') or other compounds. Old Norse 'grautr' meant 'porridge' or 'coarse meal,' preserving the most concrete sense of the root.
Germanic Development
The relationship between 'great' and 'groats' is not immediately obvious to modern speakers, but it is well established. Both derive from the Proto-Germanic root related to coarse grinding. 'Grit' may also be distantly related, though its exact etymology is debated. What unites these words is the concept of coarseness — large particles, rough texture, substantial bulk.
The semantic evolution of 'great' follows a pattern common across languages. Words meaning 'big' frequently develop senses of importance, power, and excellence. Latin 'magnus' (big) gave rise to 'magnificent,' 'magnate,' and 'magnanimous.' French 'grand' (big) means both physically large and metaphorically impressive. The underlying cognitive metaphor is straightforward: size implies significance.
In Old English, 'great' competed with 'micel' (the ancestor of 'much' and 'mickle') as the primary word for bigness. 'Micel' was actually more common in early Old English, but 'great' gradually overtook it. By late Middle English, 'great' had largely absorbed the functions of 'micel,' which survived only in dialectal 'mickle' and the reduced form 'much.' Meanwhile, 'great' itself began losing ground to 'big' (of uncertain origin, first attested c. 1300) and 'large' (from French) for purely physical size, increasingly specializing in the abstract senses of importance and excellence.
Literary History
This division of labor — 'big' for physical size, 'great' for importance — is a modern development. Shakespeare used 'great' freely for physical bigness, and the Bible translations of the sixteenth century employ it in both senses. The current state, where 'a great man' implies eminence while 'a big man' implies physical stature, solidified only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The prefix 'great-' in kinship terms (great-grandmother, great-uncle) uses 'great' in its sense of 'one degree further removed,' attested from the fifteenth century. A great-grandfather is not necessarily an excellent grandfather but one generation beyond a grandfather. This usage has spawned recursive forms: great-great-grandmother, and so on, with each 'great' adding one generation.
In informal modern English, 'great' has also undergone mild bleaching, functioning as a general-purpose positive exclamation ('Great!') that carries less force than its literal meaning would suggest — a development parallel to the weakening of 'awesome,' 'wonderful,' and 'fantastic' from their original strong senses.