MILESTONE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does milestone mean? 

• MILESTONE (noun)
  The noun MILESTONE has 2 senses:

1. stone post at side of a road to show distances

2. a significant event in your life (or in a project)

  Familiarity information: MILESTONE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MILESTONE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Stone post at side of a road to show distances

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

milepost; milestone

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

mark; marker; marking (a distinguishing symbol)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A significant event in your life (or in a project)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

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

juncture; occasion (an event that occurs at a critical time)

 Context examples 

The Earth passed another unfortunate milestone May 23 when carbon dioxide surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) at the South Pole for the first time in 4 million years.

(South Pole is last place on Earth to pass global warming milestone, NOAA)

This detailed description of the genes that are present or missing should facilitate attempts to culture the organism, a critical milestone in Pneumocystis research.

(Researchers sequence genome of a fungus that causes life-threatening pneumonia, NIH)

The time period in which the observation result is held to be true, expressed either as a simple date range or as an evaluable expression that references a study-defined date or milestone.

(Defined Observation Focal Date Range, NCI Thesaurus)

A disorder diagnosed in childhood that is marked by either physical or mental impairment or both, which in turn affects the child from achieving age related developmental milestones.

(Developmental Disorder, NCI Thesaurus)

Failure to achieve a particular milestone by a given age is indicative of developmental delay.

(Developmental Milestone, NCI Thesaurus)

After years of research, the NPURU team recently reached a milestone that allowed them to transfer the sorgoleone compound into rice.

(Transferring Sorghum’s Weed-Killing Power to Rice, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

This milestone marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known NEAs since 2013, when discoveries reached 10,000 in August of that year.

(Catalog of Known Near-Earth Asteroids Tops 15,000, NASA)

This sister of his and the Morse drawing-room were milestones of the road he had travelled.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

EDGES data reveal that milestone occurred roughly 250 million years after the Big Bang.

(Astronomers detect ancient signal from first stars in universe, National Science Foundation)

"When we are born, the circuits which process body sensations are not fully developed, so the establishment of such networks is a crucial developmental milestone for newborns," he continued.

(Baby Hiccups Key to Brain Development, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)