Astrogeny

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The branch of astronomy concerned with how stars and other celestial bodies form and come into being
2. The scientific study of the origin and birth of stars and the heavenly bodies that populate the cosmos
3. Inquiry into the formation of stars and celestial objects, including the processes by which they first arise

Etymology: Astrogeny is a modern scientific coinage, built directly from two Greek-derived pieces: "astro-", from Greek "astron" meaning "star", and "-geny", from Greek "-genia", meaning "origin" or "production". Put together, the parts describe the origin of stars, a field of inquiry that did not exist as a named discipline in classical antiquity. Because the word is a deliberate construction rather than a term that drifted into English through speech, its meaning is set by its parts. The suffix "-geny" appears in a family of similar scientific terms, such as "cosmogeny" and "ontogeny", which share the same pattern of a prefix naming the thing studied followed by "-geny" for its generation or development. Astrogeny sits within that pattern, specifying stars as the subject.