Big Five
Americannoun
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the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan during World War I and at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
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(after World War II) the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and France.
noun
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the five countries considered to be the major world powers. In the period immediately following World War II, the US, Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and France were regarded as the Big Five
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the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the buffalo, and the leopard: considered to be the five principal African wild animals, esp as sought by those on safari
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Also: Big Four. Big Three. a small powerful group, as of banks, companies, etc
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Only Wolves have lost more home games in Europe's big five leagues this season than Spurs, with eight.
From BBC
Their spend is touching £150m, but the cold fact for Europe's other 'big five' is that the Premier League will spend more than the four of them combined, just as they had in the summer.
From BBC
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s so-called Big Five—which, along with “Oklahoma!” included “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music”—have remained staples of international theater.
From its desultory beginnings, Random House has grown into a behemoth, one of the industry’s Big Five.
The Sinsk event is not considered among the best-known "big five" mass extinctions in our planet's history.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
