Word of the Day : February 12, 2021

nebula

【天】星雲

noun NEB-yuh-luh

1 : any of numerous clouds of gas or dust in interstellar space

星際雲團太空中無數的氣體或塵埃雲團

2 : galaxy; especially : a galaxy other than the Milky Way

星系;尤指:銀河系以外的星系

"Many nebulae are today known and loved by their numbers in [the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars]: NGC 6822 is a faint nearby irregular galaxy, NGC 7027 is a planetary nebula, NGC 6960 is a supernova remnant…." — Frederick R. Chromey, To Measure the Sky, 2010

今天，[新星雲和星團總目錄]中許多星雲被人們所知而且受人們的喜愛。NGC 6822是附近微弱的不規則星系，NGC 7027是行星狀星雲，NGC 6960是超新星遺蹟…。

"[Edwin] Hubble determined M31 was millions of light years away, and was actually another galaxy, rather than a nebula in our own galaxy." — Marcy Curran, The Wyoming Tribune Eagle (Cheyenne, Wyoming), 30 Oct. 2020

“[Edwin] Hubble determined M31距離我們數百萬光年，實際上是另一個星系，而不是我們銀河系中的星雲。”

The history of today's word is not lost in the mists of time, although its history does get misty at points. Nebula comes to us from Latin, where it means "mist" or "cloud." In its earliest English uses in the 1600s, nebula was chiefly a medical term that could refer either to a cloudy formation in urine or to a cloudy speck or film on the eye that caused vision problems. It was first applied to great interstellar clouds of gas and dust in the early 1700s. The adjective nebulous comes from the same Latin root as nebula, and it is considerably older, being first used as a synonym of cloudy or foggy as early as the 1300s. Like nebula, however, this adjective was not used in an astronomical sense until the mid-1600s.

儘管今天的單詞的歷史並沒有隨時間流逝而消失，但它的歷史有些模糊不清。Nebula來自拉丁語，意為“mist「霧」”或“cloud「雲」”。 在1600年代最早的英語用法中，neblula主要是醫學術語， chiefly a medical term that could refer either to a cloudy formation in urine or to a cloudy speck or film on the eye that caused vision problems. 它於1700年代初首次應用於巨大的氣狀雲層和塵埃。 形容詞nebulous也與nebula一樣，來自相同的拉丁語詞根，其歷史更久遠，最早在1300年代就被用作cloudy「多雲的」或foggy「有霧的」同義詞。 但是，像nebula一樣，直到1600年代中期，這個形容詞才在天文意義上被使用。

Fill in the blanks to complete a word that is synonymous with interval: _ _ t _ rs _ _ _ e.