The word "atmosphere" is known to everyone since school times. But what exactly does it mean and how to apply it correctly in speech? The designation of this word is present in many well-known dictionaries. Let's consider them in more detail. In addition to the well-known explanatory dictionary, there are their following types: phraseological, astronomical, encyclopedic, etc. In each of them there is a given word.
Explanatory dictionary
The most popular for recognizing the notation of various words, of course, is the explanatory dictionary. The word "atmosphere" in the explanatory dictionary stands for air or gas shell around the surface of the Earth and some other nearby planets. This is the designation of a word in its literal sense. But it also has a figurative meaning. In this case, this term will mean a tense situation, a moral situation at a particular moment.
Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl in the description of the meaning of the word “atmosphere” included not only the shell of the earth’s surface, but also the clouds and all the earth’s fumes.
Phraseological and Encyclopedic Dictionaries
The phraseological dictionary provides notation for words and terms used for simple speech. Here the figurative meaning of the word “atmosphere” is used, giving a designation of a tense situation, a difficult oppressive situation or, on the contrary, a fun event, holiday. For example: “There was a tense atmosphere around” or “There was a festive atmosphere in the apartment.”
In the encyclopedic dictionary, the atmosphere is a unit for measuring the pressure of air, water or gas. This meaning of the word is widely used in a science such as physics.
The word "atmosphere" in astronomy
The encyclopedic designation of the concept of the atmosphere is almost completely analogous to its meaning in the explanatory dictionary. The word atmosphere is derived from two Greek: atmos - "steam" and sphaira - "ball" - and means the air shell that surrounds the surface of the entire globe and rotates around it with the sun.
Astronomical meaning also means a gaseous shell located not only on the surface of the planet Earth, but also such celestial bodies as the sun, stars and other planets of the solar system.
The Earth’s atmosphere is composed mostly of oxygen and a gas such as nitrogen. But the atmospheres of other planets mainly have other components in their composition, for example, those of Saturn and Jupiter made of methane, helium and hydrogen. The atmosphere, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide, is inherent in Venus and Mars.