What it means
Describes someone or something impressively large, powerful, or just overwhelmingly present. Blew up as a meme after a tweet about a massive lad standing next to the Queen, but the phrase has proper roots in British admiration for anything oversized. Can be a person, an animal, a portion of chips, anything that makes you go blimey that is enormous.
Usage examples
"Saw this bloke at the gym bench pressing what looked like a small car, absolute unit he was, even the personal trainers were just standing there watching."
"The pumpkin my dad grew this autumn was an absolute unit, took two of us to carry it from the allotment to the car, and the village fete weighed it in at forty-six kilos with a small crowd watching."
"Saw an absolute unit of a Newfoundland dog at the park yesterday, must have been the size of a small donkey, the kids stopped playing football to come and pet it like a celebrity guest visit."
Where it comes from
Born on British Twitter in 2018, after a tweet about a notably large lad standing beside the Queen Mother at an old garden party went viral. The phrase tapped into the British love of describing large things with mock-formal vocabulary, the same instinct behind chonky cat and total beast. Made the leap from internet meme to everyday vocab in under a year flat.
Other ways to say it
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