use-icon

HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.

guide to the dictionary

use-icon

THE USAGE PANEL

The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.

The Panelists

open-icon

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP

The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.

scroll-icon

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG

The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.

100-words-icon

See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series!

Find out more!

open-icon

INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?

Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com

plan·et (plănĭt)
Share:
n.
1.
a. In the traditional model of solar systems, a celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves.
b. A celestial body that orbits the sun, has sufficient mass to assume nearly a round shape, clears out dust and debris from the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite of another planet.
2. One of the seven celestial bodies, Mercury, Venus, the moon, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, visible to the naked eye and thought by ancient astronomers to revolve in the heavens about a fixed Earth and among fixed stars.
3.
a. The collection of life forms supported on Earth: an asteroid that threatened the whole planet.
b. People as a whole; humankind or the general public: The entire planet was affected by the global recession.
4. One of the seven revolving astrological celestial bodies that in conjunction with the stars are believed to influence human affairs and personalities.

[Middle English, from Old French planete, from Late Latin planēta, from Greek planētēs, variant of planēs, planēt-, from planāsthai, to wander; see pelə-2 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

Usage Note: Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto in 1930 added a ninth planet to our solar system, and thereafter students of astronomy were taught the familiar list of nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. But in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to change the definition of planet, requiring that a celestial body must have enough mass to assume a round shape and "clear the neighborhood around its orbit" in order to qualify as a planet. This means that a planet cannot have other objects in or crossing its orbit except smaller objects that have been captured by its gravity, such as those that revolve around it as moons. Because Neptune's large mass has captured Pluto so that the two planets remain in orbits that cross, Pluto has not cleared its own orbit and was therefore demoted from planet status to that of a newly created category, dwarf planet. Like a planet, a dwarf planet orbits the sun, is large enough to assume a nearly round shape, and does not orbit a planet (as our Moon does). But a dwarf planet does not clear the neighborhood around its orbit and may cross the paths of other objects orbiting the sun. Other dwarf planets include Ceres, whose orbit is in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Eris, an object in the Kuiper belt beyond Pluto. At the same meeting, the IAU created a third category of objects known as small solar system bodies, which includes asteroids (sometimes referred to as "minor planets," compounding the difficulty of the term planet), comets, objects beyond Neptune's orbit, and other nonspherical bodies. Although officially approved, this new scheme of the solar system remains controversial among astronomers and may well be revised.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.