satellite

Etymology

From Middle French satellite, from Latin satelles (“attendant”). Ultimately perhaps of Etruscan origin.

noun

1. A moon or other smaller body orbiting a larger one.
   The Moon is a natural satellite of the Earth.
   A spent upper stage is a derelict satellite.
2. A man-made apparatus designed to be placed in orbit around a celestial body, generally to relay information, data etc. to Earth.
   Many telecommunication satellites orbit at 36000km above the equator.
3. A country, state, office, building etc. which is under the jurisdiction, influence, or domination of another body.
4. (now rare) An attendant on an important person; a member of someone's retinue, often in a somewhat derogatory sense; a henchman.
   […]he would nevertheless have a better bargain of this tall satellite if they settled the debate betwixt them in the forest[…]. Betwixt anxiety, therefore, vexation, and anger, Charles faced suddenly round on his pursuer[…]. 1826, Woodstock, Walter Scott, page 348
   The unnamed chronicler in his Dupin stories was the first Dr. Watson type of satellite—a narrator who accompanies the detective on his exploits, exclaims over his brilliance[…]. 1948, Willard E. Hawkins, The Technique of Fiction: A Basic Course in Story Writing, page 169
5. (colloquial, uncountable) Satellite TV; reception of television broadcasts via services that utilize man-made satellite technology.
   Do you have satellite at your house?
6. (grammar) A grammatical construct that takes various forms and may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or the grammatical aspect. Examples: "a bird flew past"; "she turned on the light".
7. (genetics) A very large array of tandemly repeating, non-coding DNA.
8. A community or town dependent on a larger town or city nearby.
   Ahead of us the lowering smoke-screen of Leeds and her gloomy satellites hung like an incubus over the land. 1949 March and April, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–2”, in Railway Magazine, page 82

verb

1. (broadcasting, transitive) To transmit by satellite.
   It had to speed up its efforts to participate in the international satellite television market. In the summer of 1986 it began satelliting TV programs to Africa, and in early 1987, to Asia and twenty countries in Latin America […] 1997, Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of Disinformation, page 160