Thule
UK /ˈθjuːliː/ · US /ˈtuːliː/ proper noun
Forms Thulé, Thulê, Thulē, Thūlē, Tule [17ᵗʰ C.] Thyle [17ᵗʰ C.] Thylé Thoule
- proper noun The semi-legendary island of classical antiquity considered to represent the northernmost location in the inhabited world (the Ecumene).
- proper noun (historical) A nationalist and occultist group in Germany in the early 20th century, which included some of the founding members of the Nazi Party.
- proper noun The historical Eskimo culture extending from Alaska to Greenland between the 6th and 14th centuries.
- proper noun A settlement in northwestern Greenland established in 1910 by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen.
- proper noun An air base built on the site in the 1940s.
- proper noun A locality in the Murray River council area, southern New South Wales, Australia.
- proper noun The smaller lobe of the trans-Neptunian object Ultima Thule, a contact binary object.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Classical Latin Thūlē, Thȳlē, from Ancient Greek Θούλη (Thoúlē), Θῡ́λη (Thū́lē), of unknown origin, cognate with Middle English Tīle, Tȳle, from Old English Thȳle, Thīla, Thīle (variants of Þȳle) and Medieval Latin Tīle.
Clipping of Ultima Thule. Coined in January 2019 by the NASA team investigators of the New Horizons program (see quotations below).
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “Thule”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details