'Star' is PIE *h-ster — essentially unchanged for 6,000 years. Root of 'stellar,' 'asteroid,' 'disaster.'
A fixed luminous point in the night sky which is a large, remote incandescent body like the sun.
From Old English 'steorra' (star), from Proto-Germanic *sternō (star), from PIE *h₂stḗr (star — a luminous body in the sky). This is one of the most stable and well-attested words in the Indo-European family, essentially unchanged in meaning and barely changed in form over 6,000 years. The PIE form *h₂stḗr appears across every major branch: Latin 'stella' (→ 'stellar,' 'constellation,' 'interstellar'), Greek 'astḗr' / 'astron' (→ 'asteroid,' 'astronomy,' 'astronaut,' 'asterisk,' 'disaster' — from Italian 'disastro,' under a bad star), Sanskrit
'Star,' 'stellar,' 'asteroid,' 'astronaut,' 'asterisk,' and 'disaster' all descend from PIE *h₂stḗr. An asterisk is 'a little star' (*). An astronaut is 'a star-sailor.' An asteroid is 'star-like.' And a 'disaster' is literally 'bad star' (dis + astro) — an event caused by unfavorable stars. The whole cosmos is named from one