as in world
a huge physical or conceptual distance
my sister and I are close in age, but personality-wise, there are light-years between us
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Recent Examples of light-year
The Hunting Dogs constellation, which hosts the NGC 4449 dwarf galaxy, lies 12.5 million light-years away, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
—
Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, Space.com, 25 June 2025
The mosaic, made up of 678 separate images taken over just seven hours, captured faint and previously invisible details such as clouds of gas and dust in the nebulae, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth.
—Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 23 June 2025
Each jet emerges from an actively feeding supermassive black hole, known as a quasar, located about 11.6 billion and 11.7 billion light-years away.
—Sharmila Kuthunur, Space.com, 15 June 2025
Luhman 16 is a binary brown dwarf system just 6.5 light-years from the sun—the third closest system to us—yet was only discovered in 2013.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 12 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for light-year
Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, Space.com, 25 June 2025
The mosaic, made up of 678 separate images taken over just seven hours, captured faint and previously invisible details such as clouds of gas and dust in the nebulae, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth.
—Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 23 June 2025
Each jet emerges from an actively feeding supermassive black hole, known as a quasar, located about 11.6 billion and 11.7 billion light-years away.
—Sharmila Kuthunur, Space.com, 15 June 2025
Luhman 16 is a binary brown dwarf system just 6.5 light-years from the sun—the third closest system to us—yet was only discovered in 2013.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 12 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for light-year
Recent Examples of Synonyms for light-year
Noun
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The New Zealand singer-songwriter’s third album, released in August 2021, reveled in the comfort of distance, toasting to idyllic interior worlds.—
Craig Jenkins,
Vulture,
27 June 2025
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Android Circuit rounds up the news from the Android world every weekend here on Forbes.—
Ewan Spence,
Forbes.com,
27 June 2025
Noun
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The European Space Agency telescope is designed to make a 3D map of the universe by looking at billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light years away across one third of the sky.—
Richard Tribou,
The Orlando Sentinel,
18 June 2025
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Dotted with millions of stars, galaxies and nebulas, it was only occasionally crossed by a lone satellite.—
Tereza Pultarova,
Space.com,
18 June 2025
Cite this Entry
“Light-year.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/light-year. Accessed 1 Jul. 2025.
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