Supermoon

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A full moon or new moon, when the Earth–Moon distance is in the lowest tenth of its range.

    "And should the moon happen to hit its ever-shifting orbital perigee at the same time that it lies athwart from the sun, we are treated to a so-called supermoon, a full moon that can seem close enough to embrace – as much as 12 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the average full moon. […] Some astronomers dislike the whole supermoon hoopla. They point out that the term originated with astrology, not astronomy; that perigee full moons are not all that rare, coming an average of every 13 months; and that their apparently swollen dimensions are often as much a matter of optical illusion and wishful blinking as of relative lunar nearness."

  2. 2
    Alternative form of supermoon. alt-of, alternative
  3. 3
    Alternative form of supermoon. alt-of, alternative

Example

More examples

"When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon."

Etymology

From super- + moon. Coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.