TITAN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Titan mean? 

• TITAN (noun)
  The noun TITAN has 3 senses:

1. a person of exceptional importance and reputation

2. (Greek mythology) any of the primordial giant gods who ruled the Earth until overthrown by Zeus; the Titans were offspring of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth)

3. the largest of the satellites of Saturn; has a hazy nitrogen atmosphere

  Familiarity information: TITAN used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TITAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person of exceptional importance and reputation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

behemoth; colossus; giant; heavyweight; titan

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

important person; influential person; personage (a person whose actions and opinions strongly influence the course of events)

Derivation:

titanic (of great force or power)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(Greek mythology) any of the primordial giant gods who ruled the Earth until overthrown by Zeus; the Titans were offspring of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Instance hypernyms:

Greek deity (a deity worshipped by the ancient Greeks)

Domain category:

Greek mythology (the mythology of the ancient Greeks)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Titan"):

Epimetheus ((Greek mythology) brother of Prometheus; despite Prometheus's warning against gifts from Zeus he accepted Pandora as his wife)

Instance hyponyms:

Cronus ((Greek mythology) the supreme god until Zeus dethroned him; son of Uranus and Gaea in ancient Greek mythology; identified with Roman Saturn)

Hyperion ((Greek mythology) a Titan who was the son of Gaea and Uranus and the father of Helios and Selene and Eos in ancient mythology)

Oceanus ((Greek mythology) god of the stream that flowed around the earth in ancient mythology)

Cocus; Crius ((Greek mythology) one of the Titans)

Iapetus ((Greek mythology) the Titan who was father of Atlas and Epimetheus and Prometheus in ancient mythology)

Atlas ((Greek mythology) a Titan who was forced by Zeus to bear the sky on his shoulders)

Prometheus ((Greek mythology) the Titan who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to mankind; Zeus punished him by chaining him to a rock where an eagle gnawed at his liver until Hercules rescued him)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The largest of the satellites of Saturn; has a hazy nitrogen atmosphere

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Instance hypernyms:

satellite (any celestial body orbiting around a planet or star)

 Context examples 

This may be the origin of a type of lake on Titan that has sharp boundaries.

(New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters, NASA)

To reach their conclusions, researchers built a model to replicate conditions on Titan.

('Electric Sands' Cover Titan, VOA News)

It is a Titan’s task.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Titan is the only planetary body in our solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its surface.

(The First Global Geologic Map of Titan Completed, NASA)

Unlike Earth's water-clouds, the clouds on these planets may be composed of salt crystals or photochemical hazes, like those found on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

('Cotton Candy' Planet Mysteries Unravel in New Hubble Observations, NASA)

If Mimas possesses an ocean, it would join an exclusive club of "ocean worlds" that includes several moons of Jupiter and two other Saturn moons, Enceladus and Titan.

(Saturn Moon May Hide a 'Fossil' Core or an Ocean, NASA)

These two titans of the solar system won’t stop there—they will meet two more times later in the year, on July 27 and October 12.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Rhea (949 miles or 1,527 kilometers across) is Saturn's second largest moon after Titan.

(Regarding Rhea, NASA)

I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his hand.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For the model, they put grains of “naphthalene and biphenyl — two toxic, carbon and hydrogen bearing compounds believed to exist on Titan’s surface — into a small cylinder.”

('Electric Sands' Cover Titan, VOA News)