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'In everyday conversation, "epic" is often used loosely to refer to anything big or important or long. All such uses are metaphorical extensions of its basic meaning, in which it denotes a literary genre, an extended verse narrative. In the Western tradition, the first great epics were Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The term is also applied to similar narratives in other traditions--for example, the Indian Mahabharata. Even in literary criticism, one sometimes finds it used of works which do not strictly qualify--for example, Whitman's "Song of Myself."

Non-literary uses like "epic movie" or "epic event" are common in advertising and occasionally appear even in formal prose, but it is probably safer to avoid them when writing for English teachers.

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14y ago

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