Myth & LegendGreek → English
Mimas
/ˈmaɪməs/noun
One of the Giants who fought the Olympian gods, and the innermost large moon of Saturn.
The Greek roots
Μίμας
Mímas
a Giant of myth
Literally: “Mimas, the Giant”
Follow a root:Μίμας1 word
The story of the word
William Herschel found the moon in 1789 with the largest telescope then on earth, and his son John supplied the name in 1847, giving Saturn's moons the Titans and Giants who were Kronos's kin. The mythological Mimas is a minor figure of the Gigantomachy, killed by Hephaestus in one account and by Ares in another. The moon carries a crater called Herschel that spans nearly a third of its diameter, an impact that came close to shattering it, and gives it the profile people compare to a certain film prop.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1847
Same family
IapetusHyperiongigantomachy
In a sentence
Mimas orbits well beyond the main rings, but its 2:1 resonance keeps the Cassini Division swept clean.