galaxy
pronunciation
How to pronounce galaxy in British English:
UK [ˈɡæləksi]
How to pronounce galaxy in American English:
US [ˈɡæləksi]
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- Noun:
- a splendid assemblage (especially of famous people)
- tufted evergreen perennial herb having spikes of tiny white flowers and glossy green round to heart-shaped leaves that become coppery to maroon or purplish in fall
- (astronomy) a collection of star systems; any of the billions of systems each having many stars and nebulae and dust
Word Origin
- galaxy
- galaxy: [14] The Greeks had a word for the ‘Milky Way’ – and indeed it was very much the same as ours. They called it galaxías, which was originally an adjective, ‘milky’, derived from the noun gála ‘milk’. English acquired it via late Latin galaxiās and Old French galuxie. (The term Milky Way, incidentally, which originated as a translation of Latin via lactea, is of roughly equal antiquity in English with galaxy. Their common inspiration is the white appearance of the myriad stars packed densely together.)
- galaxy (n.)
- late 14c., from French galaxie or directly from Late Latin galaxias "the Milky Way" as a feature in the night sky (in classical Latin via lactea or circulus lacteus)from Greek galaxias (adj.), in galaxias kyklos, literally "milky circle," from gala (genitive galaktos) "milk" (see lactation). The technical astronomical sense in reference to the discrete stellar aggregate including the sun and all visible stars emerged by 1848. Figurative sense of "brilliant assembly of persons" is from 1580s. Milky Way is a translation of Latin via lactea.See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë Which men clepeth the Milky Wey, For hit is whyt. [Chaucer, "House of Fame"] Originally ours was the only one known. Astronomers began to speculate by mid-19c. that some of the spiral nebulae they could see in telescopes were actually immense and immensely distant structures the size and shape of the Milky Way. But the matter was not settled in the affirmative until the 1920s.
Example
- 1. The center of our galaxy is a busy place .
- 2. And that 's just in our galaxy alone .
- 3. The low-mass black hole sits in a binary system in our galaxy known as xte j1650-500 inthe southern hemisphere constellation ara .
- 4. There are no new stars in the galaxy .
- 5. Is this one galaxy or two ?