Ackshully, “galaxy” (or rather, “galaxias”) means “Milky Way” already, it’s just a translation. It was less ambiguous when the only galaxy we could see was the Milky lights that covered a lot of our sky.
Of course, we realize there’s more than one galaxy now, so the meanings have diverged.
My great aunt explained to me as a child in the 70s that the moon was round because gravity pulled it into a sphere. This woman was born around 1890, educated in a one-room schoolhouse and lived on a Civil War-era farm in bumfuck West Virginia.
Ackshully, “galaxy” (or rather, “galaxias”) means “Milky Way” already, it’s just a translation. It was less ambiguous when the only galaxy we could see was the Milky lights that covered a lot of our sky.
Of course, we realize there’s more than one galaxy now, so the meanings have diverged.
And we didn’t realize there was more than one galaxy until the 1920s (I think?)
We didn’t even suspect?
There are people alive today who will tell you the moon is a hologram. Never respect human intelligence more than you have to.
My great aunt explained to me as a child in the 70s that the moon was round because gravity pulled it into a sphere. This woman was born around 1890, educated in a one-room schoolhouse and lived on a Civil War-era farm in bumfuck West Virginia.
And then ya got what we have here today.