GALAXY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Galaxy

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/gˈæləksi/ Listen

noun

Galaxy n. (pl. galaxies)

(Astron.) 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.

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.

A splendid or impressive assemblage of persons or things; as, a galaxy of movie stars.

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Etymology of 'Galaxy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Galaxy" Quotes from Famous Books

... movement, the absence of obstruction, to be enlarged more and more, to be counted by thousands and millions of miles; but the only terminus or boundary that we can imagine is resistance, a dead obstacle. We are able to conceive the starry spaces widened and prolonged from galaxy to galaxy through enormous strides of increasing amplitude, but when we try to think an end to this career, we can think only of a dead wall. There is no other end of space within the grasp of our ...

— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... secure of fortune as of fame, Till by new maps the island might be shown Of conquests, which he strewed where'er he came, This as the galaxy with stars ...

— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... transcended the views of his predecessor by assigning to nebulae the position they long continued to occupy, rather on imaginative than scientific grounds, of "island universes," external to, and co-equal with, the Galaxy. Johann Heinrich Lambert,[16] a tailor's apprentice from Muehlhausen, followed, but independently. The conceptions of this remarkable man were grandiose, his intuitions bold, his views on some points a singular anticipation of subsequent discoveries. The sidereal world presented itself to him as ...

— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... appointments free and popular, and from sources so various and exalted? Minister many times abroad; member of this body; member of the House of Representatives; cabinet Minister; President of the United States; such has been the galaxy of his splendid appointments. And what but moral excellence the most perfect—intellectual ability the most eminent— fidelity the most unwavering—service the most useful, could have commanded such a succession of appointments so exalted, and from sources so various ...

— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... quoth Yudhishthir, "in this galaxy of fame, Who of chiefs and crowned monarchs doth our foremost ...

— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

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