The story
Blend of quasi- + stellar, from quasi-stellar radio source. Coined by American astrophysicist Hong-Yee Chiu in 1964 in an article in Physics Today. By surface analysis, quasi- + -ar.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
quasar
Today it means: An extragalactic object, starlike in appearance, that is among the most luminous and (putatively) the most distant objects in the universe. Full definition →