Recently a friend of mine asked me the difference between the words “big” and “large.”  I had never given this much thought.  After looking at the backgounds of the two words, I found the following information quite interesting and helpful.

“Big” is a Scandinavian word that originally meant important or of great significance and was used to refer to a “big deal” or a “big man” (that is, an important leader, officer in an organization or company, or office holder in the government).  Gradually, ”big” was used in terms of considerable or substantial, and now ”big” is used to refer to something that is big in size or importance, but not humungious, terribly out of proportion, or of an undesireable nature–not extra large–just big in size or importance. Read more…