# planet

Pronunciation: say "PLAN-it" /ˈplænɪt/

## Noun

1. A large, nearly round natural body that orbits a star, is not itself a star, and dominates the region around its orbit; in older usage, also smaller bodies orbiting the Sun, such as asteroids.
   - Simple: A large round object, like Earth or Mars, that moves around a star. Older usage also included smaller objects.
   - _Each planet in our solar system follows its own path around the Sun._
   - _The newly discovered planet orbits a star forty light-years away._
2. The Earth, regarded as the world inhabited by humankind.
   - Simple: Earth, the world that everyone lives on.
   - _Human activity is putting enormous strain on the planet's resources._
   - _This planet is the only home our species has ever known._
3. In ancient and medieval astronomy, and still in astrology, one of the seven bodies that move against the fixed stars: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
   - Simple: In old star-lore, one of seven objects in the sky, including the Sun and Moon, that slowly change place among the stars.
   - _Medieval scholars assigned each planet its own crystalline sphere._
   - _In that system the Moon counted as a planet circling the Earth._

## Origin

The word came into Middle English from Old French planete, from Latin planeta, from Ancient Greek planḗtēs ("wanderer"): a shortening of astéres planêtai ("wandering stars"), from planáō ("to wander about, stray"), which is of unknown origin. They were so named because they appear to move, unlike the "fixed" stars, and the modern scientific sense of a "world that orbits a star" dates from the 1630s in English.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/planet (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).