Abnormal enlargement of the body caused by excessive growth hormone; the medical condition characterized by gigantism, or metaphorically, the quality of being exceptionally large or grandiose.
From 'giant' + '-ism' (a suffix denoting a condition, system, or quality). While 'gigantism' is the standard medical term (from Latin 'giganteus'), 'giantism' is a variant formation using the English word 'giant' directly.
Doctors prefer the term 'gigantism,' but 'giantism' shows how English productively creates new medical terms from common words—patients and writers sometimes use it intuitively because 'giant' is more familiar than 'gigant-' from Latin.
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