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Stella, the Latin word for "star," shines brightly in the word constellation, but stella words have been favored by scientists to describe earthly things as much as heavenly bodies. Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped." That use is no longer current, but today biologists and geologists might use one of these synonyms: stellular, stellate, and stelliform. Poets, too, have looked to stella. John Milton used stellar in its infancy when he wrote in Paradise Lost "these soft fires … shed down their stellar virtue." Stellar shot into its leading role as a synonym of star (as when we say "stellar pupil") in the late 1800s.
Examples of stellar in a Sentence
Blake Oestriecher, Forbes.com, 28 June 2025
The longest Prime Day ever is around the corner — but Amazon is giving us a preview of the stellar discounts to come.
—Isabel Garcia, People.com, 28 June 2025
This form of stellar explosion occurs when the gravitational influence of a white dwarf star orbiting in a binary system strips mass from its nearby companion.
—Anthony Wood, Space.com, 26 June 2025
Some stellar clusters pack thousands of stars into a small volume of space, and the bustling galactic center swarms with stars.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 26 June 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Stellar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stellar. Accessed 4 Jul. 2025.
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stellar
adjective
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