Meteor

How to spell meteor

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce meteor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does meteor mean?

1. nounA small body of matter from space that produces a bright streak of light as it burns up in the atmosphere.

Meteor in a sentence

• A bright meteor flashed across the sky just before midnight.

• The observatory recorded a single meteor during the otherwise quiet night.

Where does meteor come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek meteoron, meaning 'a thing high up in the air', which is the neuter form of meteoros, 'raised up' or 'lofty'. That adjective combined meta, here carrying the sense of 'beyond' or 'high', with a form related to aeirein, the verb 'to lift or raise'. In ancient usage the term covered all kinds of atmospheric phenomena, which is why the study of weather is still called meteorology even though it has nothing to do with shooting stars. English took the word in the late 1400s, at first for any striking sight in the sky, and only narrowed it to the streak of a small body burning up in the atmosphere in later centuries. The middle of the word is the spelling trap: it is 'meteor', with an 'e' before the 'o', echoing the Greek meteoron rather than the more obvious 'meter'.

How the word is built

• mete- (from Greek meta: beyond, in the air)
• -or (from aeirein: to raise, lift)