ABSTRACT
A Greek-derived term whose original was often rendered in translation as "Milky Way" when applied to a strip of faint stars displayed in the night sky. When that aggregation was shown to be one among many, "galaxy" became the generic term for such clusters. Theliquid analogy is often extended into references to a "sea of stars", and has been deliberately built into patterns of titles in series of novels by Gregory *Benford and David *Brin.
