gigantomania

Etymology

From giganto- + -mania.

Why this word is great

GIGANTOMANIA — [Noun] An obsession with the production of works on a very large scale, such as huge buildings, factories, weapons, or social engineering schemes; such production itself. From giganto- (Greek gigas, "giant") + -mania (Greek mania, "madness" or "obsession"), it is the pathology of the colossal. Unlike "megalomania" (which inflates the self) or "graphomania" (which drowns the world in words), gigantomania is the compulsion to reshape reality into something vast and unwieldy. It is the concrete sprawl of a dam drowning valleys, the skeletal ribs of an unfinished skyscraper piercing smog, the rusting hull of a battleship too massive to dock—each a monument to the delusion that bigger is better, and that scale alone can compensate for meaning. A reminder that bigness is not greatness, and that scale without grace is merely the arithmetic of ruin.

noun

An obsession with the production of works on a very large scale, such as huge buildings, factories, weapons, or social engineering schemes; such production itself.“The issue entered the election campaign when Schroeder's shadow culture minister, Michael Naumann, compared the memorial designs to the gigantomania of Hitler's achitect, Albert Speer. He said that none of his American Jewish friends were in favour of the memorial and that it should be cancelled.”