Definition of GALAXY

Did You Know?

The system of stars that includes our sun looks, in the night sky, like a broad band of light. We call this band the Milky Way. The idea of the whiteness of the Milky Way being similar to that of milk is much older than the English language, however. Galaxias, the Greek word for the Milky Way, was derived from the Greek gala, “milk.” English galaxy, derived from Greek galaxias, was not used until the 19th century as a generic term for other star systems as well as the one in which we live.

Examples of galaxy in a Sentence

The event was attended by a galaxy of artists. they're a galaxy apart when it comes to politics

Recent Examples on the Web

From the fiery f-bomber Gordon Ramsay, to plate-throwing empire-builders like Joël Robuchon, who has racked up an unparalleled 31 Michelin stars internationally, chefs find that one star can explode into a galaxy. — Casey Quackenbush / Hong Kong, Time, "'We're Not Educated.' The Untold Story of Lung King Heen, the World's First Michelin Three-Star Chinese Restaurant," 12 July 2018 Multimessenger astrophysics on the rise Blazars are a special type of superluminous active galaxy that blast out twin jets of light and particles, one of which is aimed directly at Earth. — Mike Wall, NBC News, "High-energy 'ghost particle' traced to distant galaxy in astronomy breakthrough," 12 July 2018 An animation of the central torus of gas and dust, thought to surround the supermassive black hole of an active galaxy. — Amina Khan, latimes.com, "After years of searching, scientists finally trace high-energy neutrinos to a distant blazar," 12 July 2018 By comparing such models to observational data, such as the Gaia spacecraft's recent map of around 1.3 billion stars distributed across a quarter of the galaxy, researchers will have a way to test the models created by ATERUI II. — Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, "The Fastest Supercomputer for Astronomy Comes Online in Japan," 1 June 2018 Star Wars’ in Chicago Chicago’s going to be the center of the galaxy next year: The official convention of Jedi, wookies and the Force is coming to McCormick Place. — Ben Meyerson, RedEye Chicago, "Star Wars in Chicago, Royal wedding after-party and more conversation starters for your weekend," 25 May 2018 The fluctuations then produced variations in the dense soup of fundamental particles that seeded the formation of the galaxies. — Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, "Stephen Hawking’s (almost) last paper: putting an end to the beginning of the universe," 2 May 2018 The truth is that, unless there has been some huge misunderstanding of the laws of physics, human colonisation of the galaxy will be hard. — The Economist, "Colonising the galaxy is hard. Why not send bacteria instead?," 12 Apr. 2018 For years, scientists have known that a monster black hole sits in the middle of the galaxy. — National Geographic, "Thousands of Black Holes May Lurk at the Galaxy's Center," 4 Apr. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'galaxy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

History and Etymology for galaxy

Middle English galaxias, galaxie, borrowed from Late Latin galaxias, borrowed from Greek galaxías (probably originally conjoined with kýklos "wheel"), from galakt-, stem of gála "milk" (going back to Indo-European *glkt-, attested elsewhere only in Latin lact-, lac "milk," Armenian kat'n) + -ias, noun suffix, especially of natural phenomena

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