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gas giant

noun

Etymology

From gas + giant, coined by American science-fiction writer James Blish and first attested in 1952 in a rewritten version of his 1941 short story Solar Plexus.

  1. derived from γίγας
  2. derived from gigās
  3. derived from *gagās✻
  4. derived from geant
  5. inherited from geaunt
  6. compounded as gas giant — “gas + giant”

Definitions

  1. A large planet composed mostly of gaseous hydrogen and helium, along with methane and…

    A large planet composed mostly of gaseous hydrogen and helium, along with methane and ammonia; possibly with a solid core.

    • A quick glance over the boards revealed that there was a magnetic field of some strength near by, one that didn't belong to the invisible gas giant revolving half a million miles away.
    • Altanorch is a small but typical hydrogen-helium gas giant with no outstanding features. Its combination of strong magnetic field and relatively shallow gravity well make it a popular "stopover" world for discharging FTL drive cores.
    • In the past two years, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has located nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates ranging from sub-Earth-sized minions to gas giants that dwarf our own Jupiter.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gas giant. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA