Galactic

How to spell galactic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce galactic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does galactic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a galaxy or to the vast scale of space.

Galactic in a sentence

• The museum opened a new exhibit on galactic distances and star formation.

• The film's galactic battles were rendered with painstaking detail.

Where does galactic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Ancient Greek gala, with the stem galaktos, meaning simply 'milk'. From this the Greeks formed galaxias kyklos, the 'milky circle', their name for the hazy band of light arching across the night sky, which we still call the Milky Way. Latin took up the idea as galacticus, and the adjective passed into English in the seventeenth century to describe anything belonging to that great band of stars. As astronomy matured, the meaning broadened from our own galaxy to any galaxy, and in popular usage it stretched further to suggest the vast or the cosmic. The surprising milk connection explains the unexpected 'lact' in the middle, the very same root that gives us 'lactose' and 'lactic', and remembering that link helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• galact- (from Greek gala, galaktos: milk)
• -ic (adjective suffix)