Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year, approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles).
- noun Informal A long way.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun astronomy A unit of
length (abbreviationly ; equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres (1016 metres)) equal to the distancelight travels in oneJulian year ; used to measure extremely large distances. - noun informal A very long way.
- noun informal, nonstandard A very long time.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word light year.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
whichbe commented on the word light year
(Symbol: ly) A unit of measurement of length, equal to just under ten trillion kilometres. The distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year.
Exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km
About 5,878,625,373,183.61 statute miles
(Wikipedia)
May 29, 2008