In the 1970s and 1980s, there was one question asked over and over again by men and women alike in every bar in town – from fern bars to discos, pubs, and dive bars. What’s your sign? It was a jumping-off point for mutual seduction that was so popular in the days of sexual freedom that came with women getting The Pill, hippies, and the glorification of cocaine as a social lubricant. True believers made instant decisions about compatibility. My sign happens to be Aries, the first astrological sign of the zodiac. Do with that what you wish.
What’s Your Sign? A Closer Look at the Zodiac
Regular readers have advantages over drop-byes
One is they know I’m big on why we need to clearly and completely agree on what it is we’re working on. They also know that I’ve developed the habit of starting any story or analysis by making sure we are all working with the same shared definition.
Too much goes wrong every time we assume we all think the same thing in the same way
It’s nothing but trouble when you’re thinking one thing and I’m thinking another. I learned this in a study I did for a client who wanted to know about air travel among the elderly in China. If you’d like to see how we defined our core term before beginning, here’s a link to How Do You Define Elderly? Just for fun, write down the definition you use before you read it.
Let’s say we’re in a workshop on How to Build Definitions We All Agree With
We’re working on an article about the zodiac, so our first step is define what we mean when we use that term. Here team members are asked to write their own brief definitions of zodiac. It’s no surprise that outdoorsmen, -women, and -kids are likely to define it as an inflatable boat.
Because you’re there and I’m here, I’ll stand in for the team
I’ll start work on our definition by examining how a dozen or more interweb sources define the term zodiac.
How to Build Definitions We All Agree With: Zodiac
I use several search engines, this time starting with Duck Duck Go, a privacy-focused search engine and web browser. No, I don’t get anything for the mention.
<zodiac>
The first result I got using iOS* when I entered <zodiac> steered me to “Get deals and low prices on the 12 zodiac signs at Amazon.” Etsy came up second, wanting me to “shop zodiac signs to decorate and furnish your cosy <sic> home with custom and personalized pieces.”
Here’s what third-place Wikipedia** said about <zodiac>
“Sector of sky representing the twelve traditional zodiac signs” and “The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year.”
The first contribution is one of the most useless things we come across in the knowledge and insights biz
Using the term zodiac to explain what a zodiac is no help at all. It’s like your idiot boss who likes to avoid things he doesn’t understand by saying “It is what it is.” That’s Popeye talk – I Yam What I Yam.
The second bites off more than I can chew
Too much detail, too much tech (8° celestial latitude, ecliptic). The most useful parts are belt-shaped and over the course of one year.
Horoscope.com came up 4th
“Learn about the 12 zodiac signs, their meanings, dates, elements, and how they affect your personality and life.” They don’t even give us a definition and a quick scan of the next two pages shows my search was too broad. Maybe I should have specified what I was looking for.
So this time I entered <zodiac definition>
Now I found the American Heritage Dictionary says zodiac is “A band of the celestial sphere extending about 8° to either side of the ecliptic that represents the path of the principal planets, the moon, and the sun.” Sounds an awful lot like Wikipedia. What I find useful here are band and sphere.
I noticed something else, did you?
This is the first time we’ve come across “how they affect your personality and life.” All the previous had a scientific component, so we’ve got something here. We don’t know what it is, but we do know it’s what researchers call an outlier. It’s a thing that’s different from all other members of a particular set. In this instance it’s a human component.
Merriam Webster was 5th
“The meaning of ZODIAC is an imaginary band in the heavens centered on the ecliptic (twice now) that encompasses the apparent paths of all the planets and is divided into 12 constellations or signs each taken for astrological purposes to extend 30 degrees of longitude.” Tedious, but I like imaginary, band, heavens, and centered.
Wikipedia didn’t show up until 6th because the ones ahead of them paid for prime real estate
“The English word zodiac derives from zōdiacus [5], the Latinized form of the Ancient Greek zōdiakòs (ζῳδιακός), meaning “of or relating to little animals”, Zōdion (ζῴδιον) being the diminutive of zōon (ζῷον, “animal”)”
A real mess, but little animals is another thing we’ve not seen before, so I’ll add it as another outlier. “Of or relating to little animals” is the original Latin/Greek definition, so this will be something for us to build around.
What we’ve collected so far, more or less
- belt-shaped
- over the course of one year
- celestial
- band
- sphere
- human component
- imaginary
- heavens
- centered
- imaginary
- animals
Math whizzes are able to easily calculate there are ~40 million ways we can arrange those eleven elements
11! = 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 39,916,800. Let’s see how we can reduce the number of elements without losing meaning and formulate them into a definition we all agree upon.
This is where the ability to do top-notch armchair research between naps is essential
In space, a belt is a region where there are many small celestial bodies. They’re round, like spheres, all of which have centers. So can we agree that the word zodiac is closely related to “A circular band of 12 imaginary animals in the heavens that are said by some to affect humans’ personalities and lives?”
Yes, but here’s where working as a group adds do much value
We get better definitions when we add something of our own that we thought of but didn’t come across during our investigation. How about adding something about how the imagining of constellations in the sky is how the zodiac signs came about in the first place?
“When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.”
Those are the opening lyrics of the nearly five-minute-long conjoined song Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In
The songwriter said they just “jammed them together like two trains.” It was sung by the Broadway cast of Hair: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical. How about that, kids? in 1969, the Fifth Dimension had a Number One hit with it.
As a team, we’d work out some details until we got to the point that we all agree on what we collectively consider to be our working definition of zodiac
Did any of us come across anything involving horoscopes?
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* I got different results with iOS and OSX using different search engines
** Pew Research Center says Wikipedia gets more than 500 million views every day. Here’s another eye-opener for you: In 2025, nonhuman searches produced more than 88 billion Wikipedia views. I include Wikipedia in my searches sometimes, because I know it’s the only source many people use. It’s also handy there at or near the top when I want a simple math answer. You know the ones: numbers that are so common as to be accurate ones that involve simple numbers. How tall is the Empire State Building? All sources agree. How many oceans are there? How many seconds in a day? How long is a quarter-mile?
My favorite search doesn’t involve Wikipedia
Is the highly-ranked Which of The Seven Dwarfs Is the Tallest? Compare that answer with others you find. A typical AISA (Artificial Intelligence Search Agent) response reads so: “All are typically around 4 to 5 feet tall, except for the 6’1” dwarf in The Lord of The Rings.
What’s Your Sign? A Closer Look at the Zodiac
Bonus
I’m innately curious, so I went back to look at Wikipedia’s footnote [5}. I’m glad I did because that’s when I found this definition from an English translation of a 1924 German publication titled A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. “A zodiac is an imaginary belt in the heavens containing the twelve signs. It is called the zodiac wheel because it contains the twelve constellations that are chiefly represented by animals.”
David Allan Van Nostrand is definitely and proudly an outlier
How many people do you know who have been researchers, writers, teachers, and storytellers who look at old things in new ways, see the commonplace in greater detail, and explain complex and technical subject matter in simple, conversational language? More than 500 of his articles are posted on this site, along with another 400 on other sites, meaning you’re bound to find some things you like and some things you don’t. Some are on the serious side, some show a glimmer of wit, and a few are eye-opening, but all are presentations of facts I was able to find during a couple of days poking around.
I can write about anything. What can I write for you?
