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Sat·urn

(sătərn)

1. Roman Mythology The god of agriculture.

2. The sixth planet from the sun and the second largest in the solar system, having a sidereal period of revolution about the sun of 29.5 years at a mean distance of about 1.43 billion kilometers (891 million miles), a mean diameter of approximately 121,000 kilometers (75,000 miles), and a mass 96 times that of Earth.

[Middle English Saturnus, from Old English, from Latin Sāturnus, of Etruscan origin.]

(click for a larger image)

Saturn

photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998

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.

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