Heliocentrism

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The theory that the sun is the center of the universe. uncountable

    "1923, Felix Adler, "The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal," American Ethical Union, 68. Geocentrism has been displaced by heliocentrism. Heliocentrism, in turn, the claim of the sun, surrounded by its satellites, to a sovereign place in the heavens, has become ridiculous in the face of the wilderness of suns that people the abysses beyond us."

  2. 2
    The phenomenon of the Earth revolving around the Sun. informal, uncountable

    "You would think the practitioners of the dismal science of economics would look at their demand curves and the data on incomes and taxes and pronounce a verdict, the way Galileo and Copernicus did when they showed that geocentrism was a fantasy because the Earth revolves around the sun (known as heliocentrism)."

Synonyms

All synonyms
heliocentricityheliocentricity

Example

More examples

"Copernicus became a symbol, that of heliocentrism."

Etymology

Shortened from heliocentricism, from heliocentric + -ism, from Ancient Greek ἥλῐος (hḗlĭos, “sun”) + κέντρον (kéntron, “centre”), equivalent to helio- + -centrism.

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