satellite

Pluralsatellites

Formssatellites, satelliting, satellited

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A human-made device placed in orbit around a planet or other body, usually to relay data and signals back to Earth.

   The satellite completed one orbit of the planet every ninety minutes.

   Communications satellites relay television and phone signals across whole continents.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An object in space that circles a bigger body, as a moon does.

   Jupiter's largest satellite is bigger than the planet Mercury.

   Astronomers tracked several small satellites orbiting the distant world.

   Similarmoon

   Note

   Latin satelles meant an attendant, possibly a word borrowed from Etruscan. The astronomical sense pictures a smaller body keeping company with a larger one. When a moon might be confused with the man-made kind, it is called a natural satellite. The word still covers anything in orbit: a spent rocket stage left circling is a derelict satellite.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A country, state, office, or building that falls under the control, influence, or domination of another body.

   For decades the region remained a satellite of the empire, taking its orders from the capital.

   The think tank functions as a satellite of the larger political party that funds it.

   Similardependency, puppet, colony, vassal, client

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A town or community that lies near a larger town or city and depends on it.

   The town began as a small satellite serving the industrial city to its south.

   Planners designed several satellites around the metropolis to ease its housing shortage.

   Similarsuburb, exurb

   Note

   The planetary image is plainest when the city is named as owner of its satellites. F. G. Roe, writing in Railway Magazine in 1949, saw "the lowering smoke-screen of Leeds and her gloomy satellites": a city as a planet trailing its moons. The usual pattern is the plural with the larger place as possessor, and it echoes the political sense of dependence.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialuncountable

   Reception of television broadcasts through services that rely on orbiting man-made communications equipment.

   Out in the countryside, most homes rely on satellite for their television.

   The storm knocked out our satellite for the whole evening.

   Note

   A clipping of satellite TV, used as a mass noun. People have satellite or get satellite, with no article. With an article, a satellite still means the orbiting craft of the man-made sense; without one, it names the service. It belongs to conversation, and in careful writing satellite television avoids the ambiguity.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To transmit a broadcast or signal to distant locations by means of an orbiting satellite.

   Broadcasters satellite live coverage of the ceremony to affiliates worldwide.

   The studio satellited the concert to theaters in forty countries.

   Similarbeam, transmit, relay, broadcast

   Note

   Broadcasting jargon that turns the noun into a regular verb: satellites, satelliting, satellited, with no extra doubling of the final consonant. It takes the program as object and the destination with to. Alvin A. Snyder's Warriors of Disinformation (1997) describes a service "satelliting TV programs to Africa." Outside the trade, transmit by satellite is the safer phrasing.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A very large array of non-coding DNA built from short sequences that repeat one after another.

   The genome contained a large satellite of repeated sequences flanking the centromere.

   Researchers compared the satellites found in several closely related species.

   Note

   Tandemly is the key word for geneticists: the repeats sit end to end, each copy directly after the last, building one long uninterrupted run. Because this DNA is non-coding, a satellite is identified by its pattern and its sheer size rather than by anything it produces.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   A grammatical element accompanying a verb that may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or grammatical aspect.

   Linguists treat "across" in "swim across" as a satellite encoding the path of motion.

   In many languages the path of movement is carried by satellites rather than by the main verb.

   Note

   A linguist's name for the small element that travels alongside a verb and carries part of its meaning. In "a bird flew past", flew supplies the motion and past supplies the path. In "she turned on the light", on marks the change of state. The image suits the term: the element orbits the verb without being part of it.

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