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Stella, the Latin word for "star," shines brightly in the word constellation, but stella words have been favored by scientists to describe earthly things as much as heavenly bodies. Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped." That use is no longer current, but today biologists and geologists might use one of these synonyms: stellular, stellate, and stelliform. Poets, too, have looked to stella. John Milton used stellar in its infancy when he wrote in Paradise Lost "these soft fires … shed down their stellar virtue." Stellar shot into its leading role as a synonym of star (as when we say "stellar pupil") in the late 1800s.
Examples of stellar in a Sentence
Dom Amore, Hartford Courant, 17 May 2026
Well, Brown needed a few more pitches this time, but the 26-year-old delivered a stellar performance to help the Cubs avoid getting swept at Truist Park.
—Meghan Montemurro, Chicago Tribune, 15 May 2026
For Birmingham, that means discovering what Alabama’s second-largest city really offers—especially its quietly stellar food scene that’s been racking up James Beard nominations.
—AFAR Media, 15 May 2026
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (or LIGO) detected the first such waves in 2015, recording the otherwise invisible merger of two stellar-mass black holes.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 15 May 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Stellar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stellar. Accessed 21 May. 2026.
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stellar
adjective
