stellar
/ˈstɛlə
/- The stars are replaced by a homogenous sea of glowing hot gas with embedded jewels of stellar accretion disks, neutron stars and super nova remnants.
- It has been used for observations ranging from galaxy structure to stellar evolution.
- And a trio of roughly Earth-sized planets was found in 2002 to orbit a dense stellar corpse known as a neutron star.
- One of the best soap opera parodies on television, Soap ran for four seasons and featured a stellar cast of players.
- Befitting such a stellar cast, the performances were superlative throughout.
- Add to that some solid performances from a stellar cast, notably an outstanding turn by Johnny Depp, and you have all the ingredients for a rollicking good tale.
- It's an exceptional read, a stellar reference, and a one-of-a-kind conversation partner for the trip.
- The former ‘Dateline’ host went into the big-time talk arena, but ratings were less than stellar.
- The show premiered two weeks ago to less than stellar ratings.
Derivatives
stelliform
- Moveover, not all of the stelliform arrangement of the drawing is necessary to form the invention.
- The stem is upright, from 30 cm to 80 cm tall, gray colored with thick stelliform hairs and a few leaves.
- At Ziegler's ball, the starburst pattern of lights on the walls is echoed by the lace edging of Alice's gown and by the blue stelliform ribbon on Szavost's lapel.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from late Latin stellaris, from Latin stella 'star'.
asterisk from Late Middle English:
The Greeks had two words for ‘star’, astēr and astron. They go back to an ancient root that is also the source of the Latin word stella, which gave us star itself and also stellar (mid 17th century). An asterisk is a little star, the meaning of its source, Greek asteriskos. Asteriskos is from astēr, which is also the root of asteroeidēs, ‘star-like’. This entered English in the early 19th century as asteroid (early 19th century), a term coined by the astronomer William Herschel. Astēr also gave us our name for the plant aster (early 18th century), which has petals rather like an asterisk. Words beginning with astro- come from astron. In the Middle Ages astronomy (Middle English) covered not only astronomy but astrology too. The Greek word it descends from meant ‘star-arranging’. Rather poetically, an astronaut [1920s] is literally a ‘star sailor’. The word comes from Greek astron ‘star’ and nautēs ‘sailor’. It was modelled on aeronaut (late 18th century), a word for a traveller in a hot-air balloon or airship. Cosmonaut [1950s], the Russian equivalent of astronaut, literally means ‘sailor in the cosmos’. See also disaster