What is another word for eclipses?

Pronunciation: [ɪklˈɪpsɪz] (IPA)

Eclipses are rare and fascinating celestial events that occur when an astronomical object passes between a source of light and an observer, blocking some or all of the light. Synonyms for the word "eclipses" include occultations, transits, eclipsings, and overshadowings. Occultations refer to when one object passes in front of another, blocking its light, while transits involve the passage of an object across the face of another, such as the transit of planets across the sun. Eclipsings are simply the act of something eclipsing or casting a shadow, and overshadowings refer to when an object casts a shadow, making another object less prominent. Whatever term is used, eclipses remain a fascinating and awe-inspiring natural phenomenon.

What are the hypernyms for Eclipses?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.
  • Other hypernyms:

    astronomical events, Celestial events, astronomical phenomena.

Usage examples for Eclipses

But the eclipses of most interest to us are those of the sun and moon, called respectively solar and lunar eclipses.
"A Text-Book of Astronomy"
George C. Comstock
On the average, will central or partial eclipses be the more numerous?
"A Text-Book of Astronomy"
George C. Comstock
Finally, when they were within a hundred yards of it, they discovered that it proceeded not from a window but from a lanthorn set down in the village street, and surrounded by five or six persons whose movements to and fro caused the temporary eclipses they noticed.
"The Castle Inn"
Stanley John Weyman

Famous quotes with Eclipses

  • The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.
    Nicolaus Copernicus
  • Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.
    Beverly Sills
  • Anaximander displays all the symptoms of the intellectual fever spreading through Greece. His universe is no longer a closed box, but infinite in extension and duration. The raw material is none of the familiar forms of matter but a substance without definite properties except for being indestructible and everlasting. Out of this stuff all things are developed, and into it they return... infinite multitudes of other universes have already existed, and been dissolved again into the amorphous mass. The earth is a cylindrical column, surrounded by air; it floats upright... without support or anything to stand on, yet it does not fall because, being in the centre, it has no preferred direction... if it did, this would disturb the symmetry and balance of the whole. The spherical heavens enclose the atmosphere "like the bark of a tree", and there are several layers... to accommodate the various stellar objects. ...The sun is merely a hole... the moon... it phases... due to recurrent partial stoppages of the puncture, and so are the eclipses. The stars are pin-holes in a dark fabric through which we glimpse the cosmic fire filling the space between two layers of "bark". ...it is the first approach to a mechanical model of the universe. ...yet the machinery looks like it had been dreamed up by a surrealist painter... closer to Picasso than to Newton.
    Anaximander
  • In science [Anaxagoras] had great merit. It was he who first explained that the moon shines by reflected light... Anaxagoras gave the correct theory of eclipses, and knew that the moon was below the sun. The sun and stars, he said, are fiery stones, but we do not feel the heat of the stars because they are too distant. The sun is larger than the Peloponnesus. The moon has mountains, and (he thought) inhabitants.
    Anaxagoras
  • The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley

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