star
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Any celestial body visible from the Earth at night.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
stahrIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈstɑɹ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Any celestial body visible (as a point of light) from the Earth at night
Any small, natural and bright dot in the sky, most visible in the night or twilight sky. This sense includes the planets, but it is now sometimes used in exclusion of them due to influence from the technical astronomical sense.
Senses derived from the apparent shape of a star in the sky when blurred by the eyes to have streaks
astronomy
A very massive ball of plasma with strong enough gravity to have ongoing fusion of hydrogen or heavier elements in its core. In strict technical usage, the Sun is included.
A shape made of a few streaks meeting at a shared midpoint.
astrologytypically in the plural
A planet thought to influence one's fate; (figuratively) fate or luck.
verb
intransitive
To appear as a featured performer or headliner, especially in an entertainment program.
transitive
To set or adorn with stars, or bright, radiating bodies; to bespangle.
transitive
To feature (a performer or a headliner), especially in a movie or an entertainment program.
Feature as the star
“The movie stars Dustin Hoffman as an autistic man.”
Be the star in a performance
transitive
To mark with a star or asterisk.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Any celestial body visible (as a point of light) from the Earth at night
Used this way, star is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- wizard , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A spacecraft designed to carry a crew into interstellar space (especially in science fiction).
The status of being acknowledged as a star.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The first flag of the Confederate States of America.
The national flag of the United States of America.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Rock star and drummer for the Beatles (born in 1940).
The light of the stars.
Abounding with or resembling stars.
A young (film) actress who is publicized as a future star.
Rock star and drummer for the Beatles (born in 1940).
Any of various plants of the genus Stapelia having succulent leafless toothed stems resembling cacti and large foul-smelling (often star-shaped) flowers.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- planetnoun
- luminositynoun
- orbitnoun
- sunnoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.