Cosmos, noun

1. The world or universe as an ordered and harmonious system.



1650 BULWER Anthropomet. xv. 149 As the greater World is called Cosmus from the
beauty thereof.

1848 tr. Humboldt's Cosmos (Bohn) I. 53 In this work I use the
word Cosmos..[as] the assemblage of all things in heaven and earth, the
universality of created things, constituting the perceptible world.

1865 GROTE
Plato I. i. 12 The Pythagoreans conceived the Kosmos, or the universe, as one
single system, generated out of numbers.

1869 PHILLIPS Vesuv. xii. 324 A
complete history of volcanos should…be in harmony with the general history of
the cosmos.

1874 BLACKIE Self Cult. 11 Were it not for the indwelling reason the
world would be a chaos and not a cosmos.
    b. transf. An ordered and harmonious system (of ideas, existences, etc.),
e.g. that which constitutes the sum-total of ‘experience’.



1882 T. H. GREEN Proleg. Ethics §145 Sensations which do not amount to
perceptions, make no lodgment in the cosmos of our experience, add nothing to
our knowledge.

1885 CLODD Myths & Dr. II. iii. 155 The confusion which reigns
in his [man's] cosmos extends to his notion of what is in the mind and what is
out of it.
  

 

 2. Order, harmony: the opposite of chaos.



1858 CARLYLE Fredk. Gt. II. i, Hail, brave Henry..still visible as a valiant Son
of Cosmos and Son of Heaven.

1872 W. MINTO Eng. Prose Lit. I. iii. 187 Work, the
panacea which alone brings order out of confusion, cosmos out of chaos.




 

3.  A plant of the genus of Compositæ so named, native to tropical America,
species of which, bearing rose, scarlet, and purple single dahlia-like
blossoms, are cultivated as hardy annuals and perennials.



1911 C. HARRIS Eve's Second Husband xiv. 278 You have that
muslin with the purple cosmos flowers in it.

1920 United Free Ch. Miss. Rec.
Dec. 226/2 Patches of white and magenta flowers called Cosmos. 1922 Glasgow
Herald 25 Jan. 8 The pale delicacy of great beds of cosmos.

 

4.  More than one Cosmo Kramer