Andromedas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A genus of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae, known for their woody shrub forms and attractive blossoms
2. The name of a spiral galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, located approximately 2.537 million light-years from Earth
3. The term referring to various mythological or astronomical concepts linked to the mythical princess Andromeda from Greek mythology

Etymology: "Andromedas" is the plural of "andromeda," the name given to the nearby spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, sometimes called the Andromeda Galaxy. The noun takes its name from the constellation, which in turn is named for Andromeda, the princess of Greek myth. In the legend, she was chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster and was rescued by the hero Perseus, and her story is told in the sky through a cluster of constellations that sit beside one another. Plural forms like this one appear when astronomers need to speak of more than one such galaxy, since the same name is used for the general class of distant spiral systems as well as for this particular neighbour of our own Milky Way.

Synonyms: galaxies, constellations