Aldebaran

noun

Al·​deb·​a·​ran al-ˈde-bə-rən 

: a red star of the first magnitude that is seen in the eye of Taurus and is the brightest star in the Hyades

Examples of Aldebaran in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Nearby glows the red eye of Taurus the Bull, the star of Aldebaran, only 65 light-years away. —IEEE Spectrum, 16 Sep. 2025

In 2008, Aldebaran Robotics came out swinging with the NAO Robot. —Joe Salas august 30, New Atlas, 30 Aug. 2025

Look down from Aldebaran and close to the horizon is Betelgeuse, the bright reddish shoulder of Orion. —Jesse Emspak, Space.com, 22 Aug. 2025

In 2012, SoftBank took a majority stake in a French company called Aldebaran. —Arjun Kharpal, CNBC, 11 Aug. 2025

The moon regularly passes close to Antares, Aldebaran, Regulus, and Spica due to their location near the ecliptic, which the moon's orbital path around Earth closely follows and often intersects. —Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 28 July 2025

The planets will appear alongside the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters, as well as the star Aldebaran, according to EarthSky. —Gina Park, CNN Money, 9 July 2025

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Medieval Latin, borrowed from Arabic al-dabarān, probably a name for the Hyades star cluster

Note: Arabic usage is not uniform in regard to whether al-dabarān is to be interpreted as the star α Tauri, or the entire Hyades star cluster, though the phrase in the Almagest, translating Ptolemy's Greek text, suggests the latter. Arabic authors took dabarān as a derivative of the root d-b-r, with meanings related to "back" (hence dabarī "trailing behind"), on the grounds that the Hyades, along with α Tauri, trailed behind or followed the Pleiades. This has the appearance of an after-the-fact etymology, however, and dabarān may be a pre-Islamic name for the cluster, of unknown origin. See Paul Kunitzsch, Arabische Sternnamen in Europa (Wiesbaden, 1959) pp. 109-10.

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

Aldebaran

noun

Al·​deb·​a·​ran al-ˈdeb-ə-rən 

: a very bright red star in Taurus