a. [ad. late L. stellāris, f. L. stella star: see -AR. Cf. F. stellaire, It. stellare, Sp. estrellar.]
1. Pertaining to the stars or a star; of the nature of a star.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Stellar … starry, pertaining to a star. Bac.
1667. Milton, P. L., IV. 67. These soft fires … shed down Thir stellar vertue on all kinds that grow On Earth.
1669. Flamsteed, in Phil. Trans., IV. 1109. At the middle of this Stellar Eclipse the Moons Center is but 20 sec. more to the South than the Star.
c. 1786. Burns, To Miss Cruickshank, 7. Never baleful stellar lights, Taint thee with untimely blights!
1833. Sir J. Herschel, Treat. Astron. (1839), 404. They present the appearance of a dull and blotted star, or of a star with a slight burr round it, in which case they are called stellar nebulæ.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes, iii. (1841), 165. Not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems.
1858. Sears, Athan., 7. Localities somewhere among the planetary and stellar spaces.
1868. Roscoe, Elem. Chem., 10. Within the last few years the foundations of a solar and stellar chemistry have, however, been laid.
1869. M. Pattison, Serm. (1885), 179. The stellar worlds, this earth included.
1875. Whitney, Life Lang., vi. 99. Disaster is etymologically a mishap due to a baleful stellar aspect.
1888. Times (weekly ed.), 14 Sept., 3/2. This stellar origin of totemism goes far to account for the widespread character of the institution.
2. Star-shaped, stellate. Chiefly of crystals; also Arch. in stellar vault (see quot. 1835), stellar groining.
1670. Phil. Trans., V. 1199. The Stellar Fish described in Numb. 57.
1835. R. Willis, Archit. Mid. Ages, vii. 85. I would call this class of decorated vaults Stellar vaults, from the regular stellate form they assume on the plan.
1841. Civil Engin. & Arch. Jrnl., IV. 286/1. The vaulting immediately preceding fan groining,… designated as stellar groining.
1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, II. 383. It may be advisable to make a clump of planting of a stellar form.
1845. G. E. Day, trans. Simon’s Anim. Chem. (1846), I. 55. Urate of soda … occasionally constitutes a very peculiar stellar form of deposit in the urine.
1851. E. Sharpe, Seven Periods Archit., 36. The plans of these vaultings are very various; some are called Fan-tracery vaults, and others Stellar vaults, terms which explain themselves.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., IV. 299. Occasionally stellar phosphate—that is dicalcic phosphate—is thrown down when the acidity of the urine is diminished.
