Experts such as Stephen Jones at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts say Mr.Saakashvili's decision to attack South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali,was a colossal mistake.

VOA: standard.2009.09.01

In comes the prehensile thumb, and the next thing you know you get a colossal earthquake, and the possessor of the prehensile thumb disappears from the earth -which is to say, very possibly the human species will never develop.

就像对人类进化至关重要的大拇指，经历了一场大地震后，如果所有有这种拇指的人都消失了,那么人类就很可能永远不能进化。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

But the firms most often blamed for precipitating the crisis were colossal investment houses, mortgage institutions, and insurance corporations, many of which required multi-billion-dollar bailouts or government takeovers to stay afloat.

VOA: standard.2009.10.01