Thule

See also: Thulé, Thulê, Thulē, and Thūlē

English

Alternative forms

• (with ού / ύ represented by u) Thule, Thulé, Thulê, Thulē, Thūlē, Tule [17^th C.]
• (with ού / ύ represented by y) Thyle [17^th C.], Thylé
• (with ού / ύ represented by ou) Thoule, Thoulê

Etymology 1

From Classical Latin Thūlē, Thȳlē, from Ancient Greek Θούλη (Thoúlē), Θῡ́λη (Thū́lē), of unknown origin, cognate with Middle English Tīle, Tȳle, from Old English Tȳle, Thīla, Tīle (variants of Þȳle) and Medieval Latin Tīle.

Pronunciation

island in antiquity

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈθjuːliː/, /ˈθuːliː/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /θuːl/, /ˈθjuːliː/
• Rhymes: -uːliː, -uːl

historical Eskimo culture

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /θuːl/, /θjuːl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtuːliː/
• Rhymes: -uːliː, -uːl

airbase

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtuːliː/
• Rhymes: -uːliː

Proper noun

Thule

1. The semi-legendary island of classical antiquity considered to represent the northernmost location in the inhabited world (the Ecumene).
   • 1844, Edgar Allan Poe, The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe II (1859), “Dream-Land”, page 41, first stanza, lines 5–6:

     I have reached these lands but newly // From an ultimate dim Thule.

   • 1969, V.E. Watts (translator), Boëthius (author), The Consolation of Philosophy, bk III, ch. v, page 89:

     For distant India tremble may // Beneath your mighty rule, // And Thulé⁵ bow beneath your sway // Far in the Northern sea, // But if to care and want you’re prey, // No king are you, but slave.

   • ibidem, footnote 5:

     5. To the Romans Thulé, variously identified as Iceland or Mainland in the Shetland Isles, marked the extreme northern limit of the known world, just as India here stands for the farthest east.

2. (historical) A nationalist and occultist group in Germany in the early 20th century, which included some of the founding members of the Nazi Party.
3. The historical Eskimo culture extending from Alaska to Greenland between the 6th and 14th centuries.
4. A settlement and airbase in northwestern Greenland established in 1910 by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen.

Derived terms

• Thulean

Related terms

• ultima Thule

Translations

legendary island in the far north

• Armenian:

  Old Armenian: Թուլիս (Tʻulis)

• Catalan: Thule (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 图勒 (Túlè)

• Esperanto: Tuleo
• Estonian: Thule
• Finnish: Thule
• French: Thulé (fr) f
• German: Thule n
• Greek: Θούλη (el) f (Thoúli)
• Hungarian: Thule
• Japanese: トゥーレ (Tūre)
• Korean: 슐리 (Syulli)
• Marathi: थूले (thūle), थ्यूली (thyūlī)
• Persian: ثولی (sūlī)
• Portuguese: Tule f
• Russian: Фула (Fula)

Further reading

• Thule (people) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

Clipping of Ultima Thule. Coined in January 2019 by the NASA team investigators of the New Horizons program (see quotations below).

Proper noun

Thule

1. The smaller lobe of the trans-Neptunian object Ultima Thule, a contact binary object.
   • 2019 January 24, Stern, S. A., J. R. Spencer, H. A. Weaver, C. B. Olkin, J. M. Moore, W. Grundy, R. Gladstone et al., “Overview of initial results from the reconnaissance flyby of a Kuiper Belt planetesimal: 2014 MU69”, in arXiv‎^[1]:

     For the purposes of discussion, MU₆₉’s larger and smaller lobes have been informally designated “Ultima” and “Thule,” respectively, by the New Horizons team. Ultima and Thule have best-fit measured diameters of ~19.5 and ~14.2km, respectively, with errors of only a few percent at this time.

   • 2020, Umurhan, O. M., J. T. Keane, R. A. Beyer, M. Bird, I. Linscott, S. B. Porter, J. R. Spencer et al., “Thermophysical, Gravitational, and Geomorphology Properties of 2014 MU69”, in Abstracts of the 235th AAS Meeting (Honolulu, HI), page 717:

     Ultima and Thule have similar colors with measured albedos ∼0.06, indicating that UT is a typical member of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt class of objects.

Coordinate terms

• Ultima (the larger lobe of Ultima Thule)

Anagrams

• Hulet, Lueth

Latin

Thule with the alternative orthography Tile.

Alternative forms

• Thīle

Etymology

From Ancient Greek Θούλη (Thoúlē, “Thule”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈtʰuː.leː/, [ˈt̪ʰuːɫ̪eː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈtu.le/, [ˈt̪uːle]

Proper noun

Thūlē f sg (genitive Thūlēs); first declension

1. a legendary northern island, Thule
2. (Medieval Latin) Iceland

Declension

First-declension noun (Greek-type), singular only.

	singular
nominative	Thūlē
genitive	Thūlēs
dative	Thūlae
accusative	Thūlēn
ablative	Thūlē
vocative	Thūlē

Descendants

• English: Thule
• French: Thulé

References

• “Thule”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press