Astronomer

How to spell astronomer

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce astronomer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does astronomer mean?

1. nounA scientist who studies stars, planets, and other objects in space.

Astronomer in a sentence

• The astronomer spent the clear night recording data from a distant galaxy.

• As a professional astronomer, she published several papers on the orbits of comets.

Where does astronomer come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek astronomos, which described a person who studies the ordering of the stars, built from astron, meaning 'star', and nomos, meaning 'law' or 'arrangement'. The Greeks gave us a closely related word, astrologos, and for centuries the two crafts of astronomy and astrology were tangled together before later science separated the careful mapping of the heavens from prediction of human fortunes. Latin took the term as astronomus, and it then passed through Old French as astronomien on its way into English in the 1300s. The same astron root still glows inside everyday words such as asteroid, astronaut, and disaster, the last of which literally meant a 'bad star'. The spelling trap is the quiet middle of the word: the unstressed schwa in '-nom-' and the agent ending '-er', so writers must remember it is astronom-ER, not the '-or' that endings like 'doctor' might suggest.

How the word is built

• astro- (from Greek astron: star)
• -nom- (from nomos: law, ordering)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)