galaxy · Milky Way
a river of milk in the sky
Today this word meansA vast assembly of stars and interstellar matter bound by gravity. Ours is one of many.
Greek galaxias kyklos — the "circle of milk." Gala is milk.
It comes from the story that when Hera nursed the infant Heracles and pushed him away, the milk sprayed across the night sky and stayed.
The Latin translation, via lactea, became the English Milky Way, and the East Asian name — 銀河, the Silver River — reads the same sky as a river.
Worth noting
Tintoretto's The Origin of the Milky Way paints exactly that moment.