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What's the proper way to say: a large family or a big family? What's the difference between them?

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Where's the homework? See FAQ english.stackexchange.com/faq Seems you are not new around here. – Kris May 5 at 7:04

5 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Nothing really. In English you tend to get a lot of words that mean the same thing, sometimes there are historical or poetic reasons for choosing one word — but not in this case.

Other than big being a much more common word and large sounding more refined there aren't many areas where you would use one over the other for purely grammatical reasons.
Note that big can also mean "major or important" — so big decision, big spender.

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And is there a difference of saying "number of reports is big" vs "number of reports is large"? – KIR Sep 14 '11 at 11:43
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@KIR - large is more common when talking about a set of things,big when talking about a single thing. So "a large number of reports" vs "a big report" – mgb Sep 14 '11 at 12:50
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Big predates large in Middle English: large came over from Norman French. Large is regarded as more formal than big, as are most English words coming from Norman French, because it was the royalty and upper classes that used these words the most while they entered the English language. – tajmo Nov 11 '11 at 1:28
Doesn't "a large number of reports vs. a big report" defeat your own argument in the answer? Think again. :) – Kris May 5 at 7:03
@kris a "large number" is a different phrase. You can still say large report/big report interchangeably – mgb May 5 at 7:44
up vote 0 down vote

They are essentially the same in meaning but 'big' is more colloquial.

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Wouldn't a big family be a family of fat people? I think of big as meaning large in volume or area, whereas large can be any dimension (large distances, large bills, large debts).

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Over-simplistic; English is not well-behaved. A Google Ngram has more big problems than large problems. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 23 at 10:24
@EdwinAshworth By the same over-simplistic logic, both big problems and large problems make sense, though they may mean different things. – Kris May 5 at 6:59
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"Big" means some extent of subjectivity, and "large" has some meaning of objectivity.

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up vote -1 down vote

Big is uncountable, large is countable. So, family is large.

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Can you substantiate that? – teylyn May 5 at 2:16
+1 I can see some substance in your argument. However, you must make a more detailed presentation with some supporting reference or by citing usage examples. This short sentence cannot stand on its own and be counted for an answer. Say, why do you think big countable while large is not? – Kris May 5 at 7:01

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