Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Roman Mythology The god of the dead and the ruler of the underworld, identified with the Greek Hades.
  • noun A dwarf planet having a sidereal period of revolution about the sun of 248.5 years, a highly elliptical orbit with a perihelion distance of 4.4 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles) and an aphelion distance of 7.4 billion kilometers (4.6 billion miles), and a mean equatorial diameter of 2,302 kilometers (1,485 miles), less than half that of Earth. Until 2006, Pluto was classified as the ninth planet in the solar system.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Roman mythology, the lord of the infernal regions, son of Saturn and brother of Jupiter and Neptune.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • (Class. Myth.) The son of Saturn and Rhea, brother of Jupiter and Neptune; the dark and gloomy god of the Lower World.
  • The ninth planet of the Solar System, the smallest (5700 km radius) and most distant from the sun. The suggestion has been made that it more closely resembles a large close comet than a planet. Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.248, larger than that of any other planet; it varies from 4.44 to 7.37 billion km distance from the sun.
  • (Zoöl.) a long-tailed African monkey (Cercopithecus pluto), having side whiskers. The general color is black, more or less grizzled; the frontal band is white.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun Greek mythology, Roman mythology Greek and Roman god of the underworld.
  • proper noun astronomy Originally known as the ninth planet but reclassified in 2006 as a dwarf planet, the brightest and first known Kuiper belt object, represented by the symbol in astronomy and in astrology.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small planet and the farthest known planet from the sun; it has the most elliptical orbit of all the planets
  • noun a cartoon character created by Walt Disney
  • noun (Greek mythology) the god of the underworld in ancient mythology; brother of Zeus and husband of Persephone

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin Plūtō, Plūtōn-, from Greek Ploutōn, from ploutos, wealth (from the belief that the underworld was the source of wealth from the ground); see pleu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek Πλούτων (Plutōn)

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Examples

  • "To "pluto" is "to demote or devalue someone or something" much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet."

    NASA Watch: Space Science News: January 2007 Archives 2007

  • You are arguing my point that radioactive decay in all planets should be about the same (Order of magnitude, within a couple of degrees) If pluto is heated by Radioactive decays to 40K and the Earth is at 288K, either the Earth does not recieve MOST of it’s heat from radioactive decay, or the Eearth has many times, (not 2 or 3 % but 700% or 800%) the radioactive material that Pluto has.

    Hits « Climate Audit 2005

  • Showalter, on the other hand, doesn't think it matters what you call Pluto.

    TIME.com: Top Stories 2011

  • In an e-mail interview with SPACE.com, Stern lays out the case for Pluto's planethood and explains why it matters what we call Pluto and other objects in the solar system.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • In an e-mail interview with SPACE.com, Stern lays out the case for Pluto's planethood and explains why it matters what we call Pluto and other objects in the solar system.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • In an e-mail interview with SPACE.com, Stern lays out the case for Pluto's planethood and explains why it matters what we call Pluto and other objects in the solar system.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • The furthest planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits at an average of 30 AU from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt, populated with icy bodies such as Pluto, is at roughly 50 AU from the Sun.

    Archive 2008-12-11 Nicole 2008

  • She wore blue mechanic’s coveralls that had the name Pluto stitched across the breast pocket.

    The Gin Closet Leslie Jamison 2010

  • I think Pluto is up there with the great comics in the West, like MAUS and WATCHMEN.

    *Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka Book 8 — Recommended » Manga Worth Reading 2010

  • New Horizons/Pluto is a good example how a budget and a deadline came together under Dr. Stern as the Principal Investigator and was conveived and executed in the FBC times.

    The Force Is Strong With This One - NASA Watch 2009

Comments

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  • I still consider Pluto a planet.

    March 3, 2013

  • Or is it a pla(y)net? ...depending upon whose court system Pluto is in?

    March 3, 2013