Titanic

The 19th century into the early 20th was a period when things titanic were in vogue.


Titan was the name, in Greek mythology, of the elder brother of Kronos and the ancestor of the Titans. In poetry it was also used to refer to his grandson, the Sun-god, Helios. The adjective titanic came to mean gigantic, colossal, thus in all ways resembling the nature or character of the Titans. This sense became progressively widened, coming into particularly wide usage in the 19th century, denoting a person, mountain, tree, etc. of gigantic stature or strength, physical or intellectual, a ‘giant." In 1796 titanium, one of the particularly strong rare metals, was given its name. Titanic, towards the end of the century, was applied descriptively to machines of great size and power, for example a dredger or a crane. 


Thus when the famous British liner of 1912 received its name, it was drawing on nearly a century of fascination with the large, the powerful, the mechanical, and drew from a legacy of Greek mythology that had for decades been applied to modern technological power.