the world or universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious system.
a complete, orderly, harmonious system.
order; harmony.
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.
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)
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.
First recorded in 1150–1200; Middle English, from Greek kósmos “order, form, arrangement, the world or universe”
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.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.: This coastal launch site served as the terrestrial gateway for humanity’s greatest leap, projecting American technological prestige into the cosmos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
“The wall is made of rocks; rocks that the cosmos started creating about 4.5 billion years ago,” wrote one commenter on the local environmental site EcoRi.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
But Swift is scientifically special, beloved by the researchers who use it to peer into the very dawn of the cosmos.
From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026
It’s a reminder that just as the cosmos is filled with hidden forces, our diet is packed with hidden chemistry.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 17, 2026
Part of her was subject to this tide that was moving through the cosmos.
From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman
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
SoftBank Corp. will work with Cosmos Lab on next-generation zinc-halogen battery cells, while collaborating with DeltaX on high-performance, high-energy-density battery designs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 11, 2026
The award is named after iconic US scientist Carl Sagan, who brought the universe into people's living rooms in the 20th Century with his 1980 documentary series Cosmos.
From BBC ● May 10, 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 he who first used the word Cosmos to denote a well-ordered and harmonious universe, a world amenable to human understanding.
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 James, Henry
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.
