Galaxies

How to spell galaxies

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce galaxies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does galaxies mean?

1. nounVast systems of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity, of which there are billions throughout the universe.

Galaxies in a sentence

• The new telescope can detect galaxies billions of light years away.

• Most of the bright galaxies in that cluster are spiral in shape.

Where does galaxies come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek galaxias, short for galaxias kyklos, meaning 'the milky circle', the ancient name for the band of pale light now called the Milky Way. The heart of the word is the Greek gala, meaning simply 'milk', because to early observers that hazy stretch of sky looked like a streak of spilt milk. The term passed into Latin as galaxias and then into Old French as galaxie before reaching English in the late 1300s, where Chaucer used it for that same starry band. For centuries 'galaxy' meant only our own Milky Way; the modern sense of a vast independent system of stars was confirmed only in the 1920s once astronomers proved that distant spiral nebulae lay far beyond it. The milk connection explains the otherwise puzzling -lax- spelling, since the same Greek gala survives in the word 'lactose', the sugar found in milk.

How the word is built

• galax- (from Greek gala: milk, via galaxias: the Milky Way)
• -y (noun suffix)
• -es (plural, with y changed to i)