light year

Noun

 * 1)  A unit of length (abbreviation ly; equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres (10$16$ metres)) equal to the distance light travels in one Julian year; used to measure extremely large distances.
 * 2)  A very long way.
 * 3)  A very long time.
 * 1)  A very long time.
 * 1)  A very long time.

Usage notes

 * The light year is a unit of length, but because it contains the word year, it is sometimes assumed to be a unit of time. Its use in the figurative sense of "a very long time" is nonstandard; it is preferable to use an alternative term in this case.
 * light year and light-year are similarly common overall, lightyear lagging far behind. light-year leads in the American corpus while light year leads in the British corpus.  GPO manual favors light-year. Merriam-Webster has light-year. OED has light year.

Translations

 * Afrikaans: ligjaar
 * Albanian: dritëviti
 * Arabic: سَنَة ضَوْئِيَّة
 * Aragonese: año luz
 * Armenian:
 * Asturian: añu lluz
 * Basque:
 * Belarusian: светлавы́ год
 * Bengali: আলোক বর্ষ
 * Breton: bloavezh-gouloù
 * Bulgarian: светлинна годи́на
 * Burmese:
 * Catalan: any llum
 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese: 光年
 * Hokkien: 光年
 * Mandarin:
 * Czech:
 * Danish:
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto:
 * Estonian:
 * Faroese: ljósár
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Galician:
 * Georgian: სინათლის წელიწადი
 * German:
 * Greek:
 * Gujarati: પ્રકાશવર્ષ
 * Hebrew:
 * Hindi: प्रकाश-वर्ष
 * Hungarian:
 * Icelandic:
 * Ido: lumyaro
 * Indonesian:
 * Irish: solasbhliain
 * Italian:
 * Japanese:
 * Kannada:
 * Kazakh: жарық жылы
 * Korean:
 * Kurdish:
 * Northern Kurdish: saletîrêj
 * Kyrgyz: жарык жылы
 * Lao:
 * Latin: spatium lucis annuae
 * Latvian: gaismas gads
 * Limburgish: Leechjaor
 * Lithuanian: šviẽsmetis
 * Luxembourgish: Liichtjoer
 * Macedonian: светлосна година
 * Malay:
 * Maltese: sena dawl
 * Mongolian: гэрлийн жил
 * Norwegian:
 * Bokmål:
 * Nynorsk: lysår, ljosår
 * Oromo: wagga iffa
 * Persian: سال نوری
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese:
 * Quechua: achkiy wata
 * Romanian:
 * Russian:
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: свјетлосна година,  светлосна година
 * Roman: svjetlosna godina,  svetlosna godina
 * Sicilian: annu luci
 * Slovak: svetelný rok
 * Slovene: svetlòbno léto
 * Sorbian:
 * Lower Sorbian: swětłowe lěto
 * Spanish:
 * Swahili: mwaka wa nuru
 * Swedish:
 * Tagalog: sinag-taon
 * Tajik: соли нур
 * Tamil:
 * Telugu: కాంతిసంవత్సరము
 * Thai:
 * Tibetan: འོད་ལོ
 * Turkish:
 * Turkmen: ýagtylyk ýyly
 * Ukrainian: світлови́й рік
 * Urdu: نوری سال
 * Uzbek: yorugʻlik yili
 * Vietnamese:
 * Welsh:


 * Faroese: ljósár
 * Finnish:
 * Hungarian: fényévek
 * Italian:
 * Slovene: svetlòbno léto
 * Swedish: