astronomy
- 1The study of the physical universe beyond Earth's atmosphere, including the mapping of where its matter and radiation lie and what properties they have.
Modern astronomy depends on telescopes in orbit as much as on those built on mountaintops.
Her work in astronomy focuses on mapping how gas is spread between distant galaxies.
Note
This is a borrowing that won out over a native word: it reached Middle English from Old French, built from astro- and -nomy, and it displaced the Old English term tungolcræft. Its old overlap with fortune-telling survives only in the obsolete "astrology" meaning; in modern use the two names stand for entirely different pursuits.
- 2Astrology: the reading of the positions of the stars and planets as signs that shape or foretell human affairs.
The prince would not sign the treaty until his advisers had read his fortune by astronomy.
In the old tale, a wandering scholar uses astronomy to foretell the fall of the city.
Note
Older English could use one word both for studying the sky and for reading fate in it. Shakespeare plays on the second in Sonnet 14 (1609): "Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck; And yet methinks I have astronomy." Only astrology carries that meaning now, so expect it in old texts and avoid it in new writing, where it would read as a mistake.
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Origin
From Middle English astronomie, from Old French astronomie, equivalent to astro- + -nomy. It displaced the native Old English word tungolcræft.