Definition of "leviathan"

Canſt thou dravv out Leuiathan vvith an hooke? or his tongue vvith a corde vvhich thou letteſt dovvne?

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Job 41:1, column 1

The fog seemed to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a steamboat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on the snout of Leviathan.

1904, Jack London, chapter 1, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap

When she had exhibited these leviathans of public announcement to the astonished child, she brought forth specimens of the lesser fry in the shape of hand-bills, some of which were couched in the form of parodies on popular melodies, […]

1840 April – 1841 November, Charles Dickens, “Chapter the Twenty-seventh”, in The Old Curiosity Shop. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1841

It [a newspaper article] named some sons of bishops, and grandsons of archbishops; men great in their way, who had redeemed their disgrace in the eyes of many by the enormity of their plunder; and then, having disposed of these leviathans, it descended to Mr Harding.

1855 January 5, Anthony Trollope, “The Warden’s Decision”, in The Warden, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, page 200

Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, my brother looked past this charging leviathan at the Martians again, and he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far out to sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged. Thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was pitching so helplessly.

1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The ‘Thunder Child’”, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, (please specify the page number(s))

After brute-forcing its way to dominance in so many industries, the tech leviathan may finally have met its match.

2020 October 7, Cecilia D'Anastasio, “Amazon Wants to ‘Win at Games.’ So Why Hasn’t It?”, in Wired‎

The fact is that [Thomas] Hobbes is interested in neither, but concerned exclusively with the political structure itself, and he depicts the features of man according to the needs of the Leviathan.

1951, Hannah Arendt, “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie”, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (A Harvest/HBJ Book), new edition, San Diego, Calif., New York, N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1973, part 2 (Imperialism), page 140

Her virtuous, pale-blue, saucerlike eyes flooded with leviathan tears on unexpected occasions and made Yossarian mad.

1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, page 171