venus
UK /ˈviːnəs/ · US /ˈvinəs/ noun, proper noun
Forms venuses Veneres
- noun Any of the bivalve molluscs in the genus Venus or family Veneridae.
- proper noun (astronomy) The second planet in the Solar system.
- proper noun (Roman mythology) The goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and sexuality, or a depiction thereof.
- proper noun A female given name.
- noun (uncountable, poetic, otherwise obsolete) Sexual activity or intercourse; sex; lust, love.
- noun (countable, art) Any depiction of an idealized or erotic figure of a nude woman, especially one in a mythological setting.
- noun (countable, by extension) Any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.
- noun (uncountable, alchemy and chemistry, obsolete) Copper (a reddish-brown, malleable, ductile metallic element).
Synonyms
morning star Phosphorus Eosphorus Lucifer evening star Vesper Hesperus Urania genus Venus
Etymology
From translingual Venus (“a genus of clams”), from Latin.
Inherited from Middle English Venus, borrowed from Latin Venus.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The goddess of beauty and love, that is, beauty or love deified.
- noun One of the planets, the second in order from the sun, its orbit lying between that of Mercury and that of the Earth, at a mean distance from the sun of about 67,000,000 miles. Its diameter is 7,700 miles, and its sidereal period 224.7 days. As the morning star, it was called by the ancients Lucifer; as the evening star, Hesperus.
Etymology [L. Venus, -eris, the goddess of love, the planet Venus.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “venus”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details