galaxy

英文詞源

galaxy

galaxy: [14] The Greeks had a word for the ‘Milky Way’ – and indeed it was very much the same as ours. They called it galaxías, which was originally an adjective, ‘milky’, derived from the noun gála ‘milk’. English acquired it via late Latin galaxiās and Old French galuxie. (The term Milky Way, incidentally, which originated as a translation of Latin via lactea, is of roughly equal antiquity in English with galaxy. Their common inspiration is the white appearance of the myriad stars packed densely together.)

galaxy (n.)

late 14c., from French galaxie or directly from Late Latin galaxias "the Milky Way" as a feature in the night sky (in classical Latin via lactea or circulus lacteus)from Greek galaxias (adj.), in galaxias kyklos, literally "milky circle," from gala (genitive galaktos) "milk" (see lactation). The technical astronomical sense in reference to the discrete stellar aggregate including the sun and all visible stars emerged by 1848. Figurative sense of "brilliant assembly of persons" is from 1580s. Milky Way is a translation of Latin via lactea.

See yonder, lo, the Galaxy? Which men clepeth the Milky Wey, For hit is whyt. [Chaucer, "House of Fame"]

Originally ours was the only one known. Astronomers began to speculate by mid-19c. that some of the spiral nebulae they could see in telescopes were actually immense and immensely distant structures the size and shape of the Milky Way. But the matter was not settled in the affirmative until the 1920s.