Other forms: astronauts
An astronaut is somebody who travels into space. Become an astronaut, the astronauts returned, a NASA astronaut.
The word is American and Western European; Russian and Soviet space travellers are cosmonauts, and Chinese ones are often called taikonauts, all three meaning much the same thing in different languages. Astronaut is the word most English speakers use for all of them. Note that the internationally recognised boundary of space is the Kármán line, a hundred kilometres up, and that fewer than seven hundred people have crossed it.
1nounastronautSomebody who travels into space.
“The astronauts spent six months on the station.”
astronaut is a traveller.
Greek astron, a star, plus nautes, a sailor — a star sailor. It follows the older word aeronaut, an air sailor, coined for balloonists, and the naut in all of them is the same word as nautical.
Ancient Greek
ἄστρον — star
English, today
astronaut
Built from
From astro- + -naut. From astro- + -naut. Coined from Ancient Greek ἄστρον (“star”) and ναύτης (“sailor”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA