[Vocabulary] She has big/large eyes.

[englishhobby]

Is there any difference between big and large in this sentence?

 

[MikeNewYork]

No.

 

[SoothingDave]

I would use "big." Unless I am performing an autopsy.

 

[Tdol]

Not really- it might depend on the type of eyes she has.

 

[englishhobby]

So there IS a difference?

 

[MikeNewYork]

Not to me.

 

[emsr2d2]

I see no difference at all. Some people might call them big eyes. Some people might call them large eyes.

 

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Hello, EnglishHobby:

I was wondering whether you have had a chance to check Mr. Michael Swan's very popular Practical English Usage.

Mr. Swan says this:

"Big and large are used mostly with concrete nouns -- the names of things you can see, touch, etc. Big is most common in an informal style."

He then gives these two examples:

"Get your big feet off my flowers."

"I'm afraid my daughter has rather large feet."



An ophthalmologist (eye doctor) talking with Mr. Smith would probably say, "I notice that your wife has large eyes, so I have decided to ...."
Surely, she would never say, "Wow! Your wife has big eyes!" (That's my opinion, at least.)


*****

When I was a child (a million years ago), my teacher would scare me when she read a story entitled "Little Red Riding Hood."

Little Red Riding Hood was a girl who decided to visit her grandmother in the forest.

She did not know that a wolf had done something bad to her grandmother. Then the wolf put on her grandmother's clothes.

When Little Red Riding Hood arrived, she saw her grandmother (who was really the wolf). She said, "Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"

 

[MikeNewYork]

I am not sure what Little Red Riding Hood has to do with this, but I see very little difference between "big" and "large". In medicine we say big liver and large liver, big spleen and large spleen, big prostate and large prostate. We usually say "enlarged heart" to avoid the common heart idioms.

 

[emsr2d2]

I can imagine the rather inappropriately happy response of someone who is told by their cardiologist "You have a very big heart"!

 

[Tdol]

So there IS a difference?

Not really, but one might be more common when describing certain types of eyes. Big brown eyes sounds better to me than large, but it's simply a matter of euphony- the meaning doesn't change IMO.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I can imagine the rather inappropriately happy response of someone who is told by their cardiologist "You have a very big heart"!

That is similar to the difference between a big/large brain and a swollen brain. Idioms sometimes get in the way of regular communication.