meteor
pronunciation
How to pronounce meteor in British English:
UK [ˈmiːtiə(r)]
How to pronounce meteor in American English:
US [ˈmiːtiər]
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- Noun:
- a streak of light in the sky at night that results when a meteoroid hits the earth's atmosphere and air friction causes the meteoroid to melt or vaporize or explode
- (astronomy) any of the small solid extraterrestrial bodies that hits the earth's atmosphere
Word Origin
- meteor
- meteor: [15] Greek metéōron meant literally ‘something high up’, and was used to denote ‘phenomena in the sky or heavens’. It was a compound noun formed from the intensive prefix metá- and *eōr-, a variant form of the base of the verb aeírein ‘raise’. When English first took it over, via medieval Latin meteōrum, it was still in the sense ‘phenomenon of the atmosphere or weather’ (‘hoar frosts … and such like cold meteors’, Abraham Fleming, Panoplie of Epistles 1576), an application which survives, of course, in the derivative meteorology [17].The earliest evidence of the specific use of meteor for a ‘shooting star’ comes from the end of the 16th century. The derivative meteorite, for a meteor that hits the ground, was coined in the early 19th century.=> meteorology
- meteor (n.)
- late 15c., "any atmospheric phenomenon," from Middle French meteore (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin meteorum (nominative meteora), from Greek ta meteora "the celestial phenomena, things in heaven above," plural of meteoron, literally "thing high up," noun use of neuter of meteoros (adj.) "high up, raised from the ground, hanging," from meta- "over, beyond" (see meta-) + -aoros "lifted, hovering in air," related to aeirein "to raise" (see aorta). Specific sense of "fireball, shooting star" is attested from 1590s. Atmospheric phenomena were formerly classified as aerial meteors (wind), aqueous meteors (rain, snow, hail), luminous meteors (aurora, rainbows), and igneous meteors (lightning, shooting stars).
Example
- 1. Note the geminid meteor just below it .
- 2. Now astronomers think it was a meteor that burned up high in the atmosphere .
- 3. Fast as a meteor , the outer hull of their spacecraft burst into flame .
- 4. Most people come here to meteor crater in arizona to see a big hole in the ground .
- 5. Dinosaurs were most likely wiped out by a giant meteor that cooled earth 's temperatures below their threshold for survival .