DECEMBER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does December mean? 

• DECEMBER (noun)
  The noun DECEMBER has 1 sense:

1. the last (12th) month of the year

  Familiarity information: DECEMBER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DECEMBER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The last (12th) month of the year

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

Dec; December

Hypernyms ("December" is a kind of...):

Gregorian calendar month (a month in the Gregorian calendar)

Meronyms (parts of "December"):

December 31; New Year's Eve (the last day of the year)

Christmas; Christmas Day; Dec 25; Xmas (a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Christ; a quarter day in England, Wales, and Ireland)

Christmas; Christmastide; Christmastime; Noel; Yule; Yuletide (period extending from Dec. 24 to Jan. 6)

mid-December (the middle part of December)

Holonyms ("December" is a part of...):

Gregorian calendar; New Style calendar (the solar calendar now in general use, introduced by Gregory XIII in 1582 to correct an error in the Julian calendar by suppressing 10 days, making Oct 5 be called Oct 15, and providing that only centenary years divisible by 400 should be leap years; it was adopted by Great Britain and the American colonies in 1752)

 Context examples 

December 15 (coming over the weekend of December 14-15) will be so special that I have to digress here before moving on to the last important day this month that Mars contacts another planet.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope also has been observing this star since December 2016.

(NASA's Kepler Provides Another Peek at Ultra-cool Neighbor, NASA)

The national drought footprint expanded from about 18 percent in January to about 23 percent by the end of December.

(2016 was 2nd warmest year on record for U.S., NOAA)

IUPAC confirmed discovery of these four elements in December.

(IUPAC proposes four new chemical element names, Wikinews)

But they don't occur till December or January, while the rainy season currently starts in mid-October — two or three months earlier.

(New Study Shows the Amazon Makes Its Own Rainy Season, NASA)

In late December 2014, a submarine volcano in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga erupted, sending a violent stream of steam, ash and rock into the air.

(NASA Shows New Tongan Island Made of Tuff Stuff, Likely to Persist Years, NASA)

Cassini and observers on Earth tracked the most recent of these storms from December 2010 to August 2011.

(Study Explains Saturn's Epic Tantrums, NASA)

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, the world's largest airborne observatory, observed Comet Wirtanen as it made its closest approach to Earth in December 2018.

(Comet Provides New Clues to Origins of Earth's Oceans, NASA)

The spacecraft has now characterized a total of 439 NEOs since the mission was re-started in December 2013.

(Asteroid-Hunting Spacecraft Delivers a Second Year of Data, NASA)

It is a hard journey. December is most gone. The days are short. It is very cold. One morning it is seventy below zero.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)