My preferred definition here, is that a big bang rewrite is a monolithic rewrite so big it goes bang (fails), pushing things from "pretty much guaranteed to fai

My preferred definition here, is that a big bang rewrite is a monolithic rewrite so big it goes bang (fails), pushing things from "pretty much guaranteed to fail", to "is by definition a failure". You might end up rewriting the entire codebase through an incremental approach ala the Ship of Theseus through a series of smaller rewrites, but that's something very different and distinct from a "big bang rewrite" to me.