Word.ws English Dictionary

Mira

Mira proper noun: a binary star in the constellation Cetus, Omicron (ο) Ceti. The system contains a variable red giant and a white dwarf. Its brightness varies from a magnitude 2 at its brightest to a magnitude 10 at its dimmest.

Proper noun (1)

Mira

  1. A binary star in the constellation Cetus, Omicron (ο) Ceti. The system contains a variable red giant and a white dwarf. Its brightness varies from a magnitude 2 at its brightest to a magnitude 10 at its dimmest.
    • The favoured explanation, adopted by Maraldi, was based on the assumption that the star was rotating and composed of two different parts, a bright and a dark region; if so, it might only be visible when the bright region turned towards Earth. Whatever the explanation, Mira had puzzled the...2008, Helge Kragh, The Moon that Wasn't: The Saga of Venus' Spurious Satellite, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 80
    Synonyms:
    Omicron Ceti

Proper noun (2)

Mira

  1. Mirabai, a 16th-century Indian poetess.
  2. (broadly) A female given name from India.
    • Dorothy's daughters were of exceptional beauty and the sisters could complain only that the Hindi names Dorothy had chosen - Mira, Leela, Lena - were meant to pass as Western ones.1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Penguin Books, published 1977, →ISBN, page 366

Synonyms of Mira

  • Omicron Ceti

Origin of Mira

Named by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1662, from Latin mīrus (“wonderful, surprising”).

* Borrowed from Hindi मीरा (mīrā), name of a 16th century Indian poetess, also affectionately called Mirabai. * As occasionally borne by anglophones in the West, the name may also be borrowed from Slavic, or be a short form of Miranda.

Words formed from Mira

Phrases with Mira

Questions about Mira

What does Mira mean?
Mira means a binary star in the constellation Cetus, Omicron (ο) Ceti. The system contains a variable red giant and a white dwarf. Its brightness varies from a magnitude 2 at its brightest to a magnitude 10 at its dimmest.
What part of speech is Mira?
Mira is a proper noun.

Words near Mira in the dictionary

  1. miqvoth
  2. miqweh
  3. miqwot
  4. miqwoth
  5. mir
  6. Mira
  7. Mira Loma
  8. Mira Mesa
  9. Mira Monte
  10. Mira variable
  11. Mira variables

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mira (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Mira.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mira. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.