Dorado
1
9.9
- proper noun
- Astronomers admire Dorado for its bright stars and proximity to other constellations like Reticulum.
- El Dorado
Examples
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During the summer nights, the constellation Dorado stands out among the stars visible from the southern hemisphere.
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After the conquest and sack of the Incan Empire by Spain, the Indians invented the legend of El Dorado, a land of gold located in the swamps of the Amazon tributaries.
Academic text (1993) -
Aguirre opens with a breathtaking scene of the Spanish expedition descending the Andes along narrow mountain trails into the Amazon Basin in search of El Dorado, the Indian kingdom of gold.
Academic text (1993) -
The conquistadors, blinded by their greed for El Dorado, are trapped in their self-imposed delusions of grandeur: in short, they cannot see the Amazon empirically.
Academic text (1993) -
The constellation Dorado can be seen in the southern sky, revealing the beauty of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Compounds
- Literature
7
9.9
An imagined place in South America that early explorers thought had great wealth
Surface Forms
Etymology
Dorado gets its name from Spanish dorado, which means 'golden' and is related to oro 'gold'. Early sailors used the name for a shiny, golden fish, and the stars were drawn as that fish, so the constellation's name reminds us of a 'golden' fish in the sky.