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Stella, the Latin word for "star," shines brightly in the word constellation, but stella words have been favored by scientists to describe earthly things as much as heavenly bodies. Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped." That use is no longer current, but today biologists and geologists might use one of these synonyms: stellular, stellate, and stelliform. Poets, too, have looked to stella. John Milton used stellar in its infancy when he wrote in Paradise Lost "these soft fires … shed down their stellar virtue." Stellar shot into its leading role as a synonym of star (as when we say "stellar pupil") in the late 1800s.
Examples of stellar in a Sentence
Jordan McPherson, Miami Herald, 7 Apr. 2024
The Royals’ starting rotation has a stellar 1.43 ERA but haven’t had the run support to back them up often this season.
—Shreyas Laddha, Kansas City Star, 5 Apr. 2024
Led by a standout performance by Michael Douglas, the stellar cast ensures the show is never dry, and at times verges on being a light-hearted romp.
—John Hopewell, Variety, 5 Apr. 2024
But his findings on the relationship between prices and earnings — for which he was awarded a Nobel — suggests that the S&P 500 is less likely to produce stellar returns over the following decade than was the case when the market bottomed in early 2020, during the Covid-19 recession.
—Jeff Sommer, New York Times, 5 Apr. 2024
In this case, no merge happens, and instead, the star zooming by gives another star a stellar 'high-five' (or hard slap) and loses some of its mass.
—Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 5 Apr. 2024
The supporting cast remains stellar (Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban), as Bourne navigates ingenious spy gambits, daring last-minute escapes, and some truly brutal fight scenes to reach his goal.
—Dennis Perkins, EW.com, 5 Apr. 2024
With Stroud coming off a stellar debut season in the NFL, having a cast of dynamic options should make his life easier as the Texans look to transition from upstarts to Super Bowl hopefuls.
—Ben Morse, CNN, 4 Apr. 2024
Paster and Blunt, who’ve been collaborating for 18 years, also served up attention-grabbing red for the star’s stellar Oppenheimer run, including a wow moment with crimson Armani Privé sequins and Tiffany & Co. jewels for the Critics Choice Awards.
—Carol McColgin, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'stellar.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Stellar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stellar. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.
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Kids Definition
stellar
adjective
More from Merriam-Webster on stellar
Nglish: Translation of stellar for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of stellar for Arabic Speakers
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about stellar
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