horizon
//həˈɹaɪ.zən//
Forms
- Plural
- horizons
Definitions
1.The visible horizontal line (in all directions) where the sky appears to meet the earth in the distance.
- The sky and sea seem to merge at the horizon.
- A tall building was visible on the whole sweep of the horizon.
2.The range or limit of one's knowledge, experience or interest; a boundary or threshold.
- With clinical researchers hard at work, a new treatment is on the horizon.
- Some students take a gap year after finishing high school to broaden their horizons.
- The Indians of the Americas totaled no less than 70 million when the foreign conquerors appeared on the horizon; a century and a half later they had been reduced to 3.5 million.
3.The range or limit of any dimension in which one exists.
- Only mortality, this irreducible and primordial horizon, that very horizon which, in Being and Time, Heidegger so compellingly revealed as the unsurpassable and defining possibility, remains.
4.A specific layer of soil, or stratum
- The moon was above the horizon.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #3565
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English orisonte, orisoun
From Middle French horizon, horizonte
From Old French orisonte, orison, via Latin horizōn
From Ancient Greek ὁρίζων (horízōn)
From ὅρος (hóros, “boundary”).