Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A celestial body that orbits the sun and is massive enough to assume a nearly spherical shape, but that does not clear other bodies from the neighborhood around its orbit and is not a satellite of a planet.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun astronomy Any astronomical body which has achieved
hydrostatic equilibrium (which is the shape a body of water would take, as opposed to a small Solar System body), orbits theSun (as opposed to amoon ), and has not "cleared its neighbourhood" of competing bodies (as opposed to aplanet ).
Etymologies
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Examples
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qroqqa commented on the word dwarf planet
The five objects that have so far been declared dwarf planets are Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake.
The expression is grammatically unusual in that it is not a hyponym of its head: a dwarf planet is not a kind of planet. Most such expressions in English have to do with unreality of some kind (a fake Rembrandt is not a Rembrandt, a pretend dinosaur is not a dinosaur, an attempted coup is not a coup), or are lexically quirky (a Welsh rabbit is not a rabbit), or are named for rough biological resemblance (a sea anemone is not an anemone).
March 27, 2009
alexz commented on the word dwarf planet
A planet of miniature people. http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_Planet
Planet Kujal.
July 20, 2015