light year
/ˈlaɪt.jɪɹ/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.24 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
1
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A unit of length used to measure extremely large distances, equal to approximately 9.46 trillion kilometres 10 trillion kilometres (10¹⁶ metres), equivalent to the distance light travels in one Julian year.
Example Sentences
- "We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year."
- "The marathon runner in the lead is light years ahead of the one at the back."
- "Now that they've graduated, they'll have to make some mature decisions in their future. One of which? Settling on their signature scent that is lightyears away from the $10 body spray they had throughout school."
- "Some of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions were light years ahead of their time."
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈlaɪt.jɪɹ/
- British English: /ˈlaɪt.jɪə/