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  1. galaxy love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Any of numerous large-scale aggregates of stars, gas, and dust that constitute the universe, containing an average of 100 billion (1011) solar masses and ranging in diameter from 1,500 to 300,000 light-years. Also called nebula.
  2. n. The Milky Way.
  3. n. An assembly of brilliant, glamorous, or distinguished persons or things: a galaxy of theatrical performers.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. In astronomy, the Milky Way, a luminous band extending around the heavens. It is produced by myriads of stars, into which it is resolved by the telescope. It divides into two great branches, which remain apart for a distance of 150° and then reunite; there are also many smaller branches. At one point it spreads out very widely, exhibiting a fan-like expanse of interlacing branches nearly 20° broad; this terminates abruptly and leaves a kind of gap. At several points are seen dark spots in the midst of some of the brightest portions.
  2. n. Hence—2. Any assemblage of splendid, illustrious, or beautiful persons or things.
  3. n. Same as galax, 2: a play upon that name.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The Milky Way, that luminous tract, or belt, which is seen at night stretching across the heavens, and which is composed of innumerable stars, so distant and blended as to be distinguishable only with the telescope.
  2. n. A very large collection of stars comparable in size to the Milky Way system, held together by gravitational force and separated from other such star systems by large distances of mostly empty space. Galaxies vary widely in shape and size, the most common nearby galaxies being over 70,000 light years in diameter and separated from each other by even larger distances. The number of stars in one galaxy varies, and may extend into the hundreds of billions.
  3. n. A splendid or impressive assemblage of persons or things.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a splendid assemblage (especially of famous people)
  2. n. 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
  3. n. (astronomy) a collection of star systems; any of the billions of systems each having many stars and nebulae and dust

Etymologies

  1. From Old French galaxie, from Latin galaxias, from Ancient Greek γαλαξίας (galaksias, "Milky Way"), from γάλα (gala, "milk"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English galaxie, the Milky Way, from Late Latin galaxiās, from Greek, from gala, galakt-, milk. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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synonyms (2)

Words with the same meaning

  1. assemble
  1. G

hypernyms (6)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. aggregation
  1. collection
  1. accumulation
  1. assemblage
  1. herbaceous plant
  1. Herb

same context (21)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. universe
  2. planet
  3. continent
  4. star
  1. globe
  2. sphere
  3. civilization
  4. constellation
  1. empire
  2. ocean
  3. colony
  4. horizon
  1. nebula
  2. cosmos
  3. region
  4. cavern
  1. being
  2. valley
  3. sector
  4. creation
  1. territory

reverse dictionary (39)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. Magellanic Cloud
  2. Milky Way
  3. spiral galaxy
  4. spiral nebula
  5. Milky Way galaxy
  6. milky way system
  7. andromeda galaxy
  1. nebula
  2. galactic
  3. via lactea
  4. galax
  5. irresolvable nebulæ
  6. apogalactic
  7. quasar
  1. galactic circle
  2. galaxy
  3. protogalaxy
  4. detection
  5. Seyfert galaxy
  6. MACHO
  7. Hubble's constant
  1. ultraviolet dropout
  2. radio galaxy
  3. open cluster
  4. gravitational lens
  5. globular cluster
  6. antigalaxy
  7. Andromeda
  1. intragalactic
  2. nucleus
  3. ultragalactic
  4. extragalactic
  5. hubble constant
  6. hubble parameter
  7. hubble's parameter
  1. jan hendrix oort
  2. Oort
  3. andromeda
  4. Coalsack

tags (4)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. astronomy
  1. teek
  1. science fiction
  1. cvcvcv

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  • oroboros The Mount Palomar observatory telescope's reflector (some 16 feet in diameter, I believe) sees this much of the sky in its field of vision: hold out a poppy seed at arm's length up against the sky and that's it! If the telescope were to pan the heavens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it would take 1000 years to finally cover the night sky...and that's just the half it can see! Now, in that poppy-seed-field-of-view mostly what's seen are not stars, but GALAXIES, each containing untold billions of stars in its own right. Try to get your head around that!! This analogy, best as I remember, was presented in "First Light: the Search for the Edge of the Universe" by Richard Preston (1987). Highly recommended; a real cosmic thriller.

    Edit: Another fact from Preston's book: The disk of the full moon covers at least 12,000 galaxies.

    For more see moon. Feb 8, 2007

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‘galaxy’ has been looked up 2995 times, loved by 6 people, added to 56 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 17.