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atlas

UK/ˈætləs/US/ˈætləs/
nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,207 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: atlases

An atlas is a book of maps. A road atlas, look it up in the atlas, an atlas of the world.

The name comes from Mercator, who put the Titan Atlas on the cover of his collection of maps in 1595 — so a whole class of books is named after a picture. The top vertebra of the spine is also called the atlas, because it holds up the head.

User Michiel1972 on nl.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of atlas

  1. 1nounatlasA book of maps.B1+

    “The children looked up Peru in the school atlas.”

atlas is a book.

Where it comes from

From Atlas, the Titan who held up the heavens. Mercator put him on the cover of a book of maps in 1595 and the name stuck.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *telh₂- (bear)

  2. Latin

    Atlas

  3. English, today

    atlas

Built from

  • Ἄτλας · Ancient Greek — Bearer (of the Heavens)
  • τλῆναι · Ancient Greek — to suffer”, “to endure”, “to bear

Borrowed from Latin Atlas, from the name of the Ancient Greek - mythological figure Ἄτλας (“Bearer (of the Heavens)”), from τλῆναι (“to suffer”, “to endure”, “to bear”). The sense referring to books of maps comes from the Atlas of Mercator, which he named thus in honor of Atlas, who was supposed to be skillful in astronomy and the doctrine of the sphere. The sense referring to the vertebra reflects that the spine carries the globe of the cranium (the neck carries the head).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Libraries & Museums

Practise this word

atlas in the wild

  • An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth.

    Atlas

  • Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets.

    Atlas

  • The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World is a large-format English language atlas of ancient Europe, Asia, and North Africa, edited by Richard J.

    Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World

  • The atlas was published by Princeton University Press in 2000.

    Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.