cosmos
noun
the world or universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious system.
cosmos
American
[koz-mohs, -muhs]
/ ˈkɒz moʊs, -məs /
noun
-
cosmos,
plural
-
cosmoses
plural
-
the world or universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious system.
-
a complete, orderly, harmonious system.
-
order; harmony.
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any composite plant of the genus Cosmos, of tropical America, some species of which, as C. bipannatus and C. sulphureus, are cultivated for their showy ray flowers.
-
(initial capital letter) Also Kosmos. one of a long series of Soviet satellites that have been launched into orbit around the earth.
Cosmos
1
British
/ ˈkɒzmɒs /
noun
cosmos
2
British
/ ˈkɒzmɒs /
noun
-
the world or universe considered as an ordered system
-
any ordered system
-
harmony; order
-
any tropical American plant of the genus Cosmos, cultivated as garden plants for their brightly coloured flowers: family Asteraceae (composites)
cosmos
Scientific
/ kŏz′məs,kŏz′mōs′ /
Usage
What is the cosmos flower? A cosmos is a flower with brightly colored, raylike petals. The name cosmos can be used for any plant in the genus Cosmos. The plural can be cosmos or cosmoses. Cosmoses are popular in gardens. Two of the best-known species are Cosmos bipannatus and Cosmos sulphureus (known as sulphur cosmos), both of which are cultivated for their flowers. Cosmos flowers vary widely in color. Varieties include yellow, orange, pink, and purple. In some varieties, the petals are notched at the tips. Cosmos are one of the October birth flowers (a flower that’s associated with a particular month in the same way as a birthstone). Example: The display at the botanical garden featured flashy orange cosmoses.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cosmos
First recorded in 1150–1200; Middle English, from Greek kósmos “order, form, arrangement, the world or universe”
Explanation
The cosmos is the sum total of everything — pretty big. It's hard to wrap your mind around the cosmos, as it extends far beyond the Milky Way, or far-off galaxies, or even our own universe. Cosmos is originally a Greek word, meaning both "order" and "world," because the ancient Greeks thought that the world was perfectly harmonious and impeccably put in order. We now use cosmos without the idea of perfect order. Now it means, "all of creation," and particularly on the scale of the stars, the planets, the black holes, the other universes, and all the stuff we don't know about. It's also, totally separately, the name of a pretty, flowering Mexican herb.
Vocabulary lists containing cosmos
Elements of the Universe: Cosm, Cosmo ("Universe")
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Oh, My Stars! The Language of Outer Space
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Space Science (Astronomy) - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Those detectors will gather photons from distant astronomical objects and turn them into detailed panoramas of the cosmos.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 31, 2026
Same cheery font, same yellow bus blasting through the cosmos, same depiction of wacky teacher Ms. Frizzle and her cute chameleon sidekick Liz.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2026
Comic book versions of the Green Lantern toss around the power of the cosmos.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
His position in the political cosmos is changing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
A Clock Watcher whose whole body seemed a shifty cosmos of dark skies, dark clouds, and stars, with a lopsided fingernail moon where most people had faces, raised its arms high and wide.
From "The Last Last-Day-of-Summer" by Lamar Giles
To conduct the analysis, researchers used Epic Cosmos, a database containing more than 300 million electronic health records from over 1,850 hospitals, including more than one-third of US transplant centers.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 1, 2026
In 1975, a Brazilian named Edson Arantes do Nascimento landed in New York to sign for a short-lived team called the Cosmos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
He was pointing to a Brazilian in a New York Cosmos jersey.
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2026
The accompanying Cosmos software allows customers to run diagnostics and telemetry to check on their systems, Mohan added.
From MarketWatch ● May 5, 2026
It was first thought to be hot intergalactic hydrogen, an immense amount of it never before seen, perhaps enough to close the Cosmos and to guarantee that we are trapped in an oscillating universe.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
In many ways, the physics of these budding cosmoses are like the baby universes Hawking and Guth hatch inside black holes.
From Time Magazine Archive
You evidently fancy that cosmoses are born to all the faculty they shall ever have, like ducks: no such thing.
From Notes of a Son and Brother by Henry James
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
