venus
noun
Simple meaning
The second nearest planet to the sun.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
veenuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈvinəs
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
astronomy
The second nearest planet to the sun; it is peculiar in that its rotation is slow and retrograde (in the opposite sense of the Earth and all other planets except Uranus); it is visible from Earth as an early `morning star' or an `evening star'
“Before it was known that they were the same object the evening star was called Venus and the morning star was called Lucifer.”
astronomy
The second planet in the Solar system, named for the goddess.
Roman mythology
Goddess of love; counterpart of Greek Aphrodite
Roman mythology
The goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and sexuality.
countable
Any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.
Any of the bivalve molluscs in the genus Venus or family Veneridae.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The second nearest planet to the sun; it is peculiar in that its rotation is slow and retrograde (in the opposite sense of the Earth and all other planets except Uranus); it is visible from Earth as an early `morning star' or an `evening star'
Used this way, venus is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
“Before it was known that they were the same object the evening star was called Venus and the morning star was called Lucifer.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
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.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Delicate maidenhair fern with slender shining black leaf stalks.
An edible American clam.
Type genus of the family Veneridae: genus of edible clams with thick oval shells.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: second nearest planet to the sun
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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.