Big Dipper

(constellation, obsolete, especially, US) A bright circumpolar asterism of the northern sky. It is part of the constellation Ursa Major and includes the stars Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Dubhe, Merak, and Phecda.

(AU, asterism) A pot-shaped asterism in the constellation Orion, consisting of Orion's Belt, Orion's Sword, and the star Eta Orionis.

A cup-shaped vessel with a long handle, for dipping into and ladling out liquids; a ladle or scoop.

An old-fashioned American folk measurement meaning as much as a dipper — the long-handled ladle or cup once used to scoop water from a bucket or barrel — can hold. Roughly equivalent to a cupful, it's the kind of measure you'd find in 19th-century recipes, pioneer diaries, and Southern folk cooking traditions. The word has a warm, domestic, frontier-era quality and occasionally appears in historical fiction or when someone wants to evoke a time before standardised kitchen measurements.

One who, or that which, dips (immerses something, or itself, into a liquid).