# sun

Pronunciation: say "SUN" /sʌn/

## Noun

1. The star at the center of our solar system, which the earth orbits and which gives it light and heat; also, any similar star at the center of a planetary system.
   - Simple: The star that the earth goes around and that gives us light and heat, or any star with planets going around it.
   - _Many stars far larger than our sun burn at the heart of distant systems._
   - _Astronomers have confirmed thousands of planets orbiting suns beyond our own._
2. Light and heat from the sun as experienced on earth; sunshine or sunlight.
   - Simple: The light and warmth that come from the sun.
   - _She pulled the curtains to keep the afternoon sun off the paintings._
   - _After days of rain, everyone rushed outside to enjoy the sun._
3. Sunrise or sunset; the rising or setting of the sun. *(literary)*
   - Simple: The time when the sun rises or goes down.
   - _From sun to sun the shepherds followed their flocks across the hills._
   - _Hired hands on the old farms worked from sun to sun for a dollar a day._
6. A person or thing resembling the sun in brightness or splendor.
   - Simple: A person or thing that seems as bright and grand as the sun.
   - _In the poem, his beloved is the sun around whom his world turns._
   - _For the young painters of the town, the old master was a sun they all turned toward._
7. A year, thought of as one circuit of the Earth around the Sun. *(literary)*
   - Simple: One whole trip of the Earth around the Sun, which makes a year.
8. A day, thought of as one passage of the Sun across the sky. *(literary)*
   - Simple: One trip of the Sun across the sky, which makes a day.

## Verb

4. To put something out in the sunshine to warm, dry, or bleach it.
   - Simple: To put something in the sun to dry it or warm it.
5. To lie or sit out in sunlight, usually to warm oneself or get a tan; very often used reflexively, as in sun oneself.
   - Simple: To sit or lie out in the sunlight.
   - _Lizards sun on the warm rocks every morning._
   - _He sunned by the pool the whole afternoon._

## Other meanings

- (noun) In tarot and other fortune-telling decks such as Lenormand, the card called the Sun, usually read as a sign of joy and success.
- (verb) To let sunlight fall on one's eyes as an exercise in the Bates method.
- (noun) In traditional Japanese measurement, a length of roughly 30.3 millimeters, or 1.193 inches.

## Origin

This comes from Middle English "sonne" and Old English "sunne," going back through Proto-Germanic "*sunnǭ" to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "sun." It is related to German "Sonne," Dutch "zon," and, outside Germanic, to words like Welsh "huan" and Sanskrit "svàr," as well as "sol" and "Helios."

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