Meanings
- astronomyA geocentric model of the solar system, described by the eponymous astronomer.
The theories in your books are almost as obsolete as the Ptolemaic System.
1882, Thomas Hardy, chapter VII, in Two on a Tower. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 1282 more examples
[T]o Hipparchus we owe that theory of the heavens, commonly called the Ptolemaic system, which, starting from the assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe, attempted to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies by a complex system of supposed eccentrics and epicycles.
1902, Charles Kingsley, “Lecture I. The Ptolemaic Era.”, in Alexandria and Her SchoolsSingh … criticizes the Ptolemaic system for its "inordinately complex" heaps of epicycles on epicycles, but declares that in some respects it was more accurate than the Copernican system.
2005 February 20, Owen Gingerich, "‘Big Bang’: The Real Creation Science" (review of Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh), The New York Times (retrieved 7 Nov 2012)
Origin
After Greek-Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90 - c. 168 AD), who explained the theory in an influential work.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Finnish Ptolemaioksen malli
- Ptolemaioksen malligeosentric model
Polish model Ptolemeuszowski
- model Ptolemeuszowskigeosentric model
Cite this entry
Ptolemaic system. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Ptolemaic%20system
“Ptolemaic system.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Ptolemaic%20system. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Ptolemaic system,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Ptolemaic%20system.
Source: Ptolemaic system on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.