meteor

The word 'meteor' reveals a time when the line between astronomy and weather science did not exist.‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‍​‍​‍​‌​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍ It derives from Greek 'metéōron' (μετέωρον), the neuter form of the adjective 'metéōros' (μετέωρος), meaning 'raised up,' 'lofty,' or 'suspended in the air.' The adjective is formed from 'metá' (beyond, among) and a form related to 'aéirein' (to raise, to lift), tracing back to the PIE root *h₂wer- (to raise). In its original Greek sense, a 'metéōron' was anything that appeared in the sky or atmosphere: rain, snow, hail, wind, lightning, rainbows, halos, and shooting stars were all 'metéōra' — things lifted up.

Aristotle's treatise 'Meteorologica' (c. 340 BCE) codified this broad classification. For Aristotle, everything between the earth's surface and the sphere of the moon was the realm of 'ta metéōra.' He explained shooting stars (what we now call meteors) as ignitions of dry exhalations in the upper atmosphere — the same framework he applied to comets. This was wrong about shooting stars and comets but roughly right about lightning and rain. The critical point is that Aristotle did not distinguish between celestial and atmospheric phenomena in the way we do today; they were all 'things up in the air.'

The word entered Latin as 'meteorum' and was used throughout the Middle Ages in its broad Aristotelian sense. When it passed into English in the late sixteenth century, 'meteor' initially retained this generality. An English 'meteor' could be any atmospheric phenomenon: a 'watery meteor' was rain, a 'fiery meteor' was lightning or a shooting star, an 'airy meteor' was wind. Only gradually, over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, did the word narrow to its modern meaning of a luminous streak produced by a small body entering the earth's atmosphere from space.

This narrowing created an odd linguistic consequence. The study of weather kept the old broad term and became 'meteorology' — literally, the study of things raised up in the air. The study of the specific objects we now call meteors became part of astronomy. So meteorologists study weather, not meteors, and astronomers study meteors, not 'meteorological' phenomena. The terminology is a fossil of Aristotle's original classification, preserved in amber.

Modern science distinguishes three related terms: a 'meteoroid' is a small rocky or metallic body in space; a 'meteor' is the streak of light it produces upon entering the atmosphere; and a 'meteorite' is the fragment that survives to reach the ground. The suffix '-ite' in 'meteorite' follows the standard geological convention for naming rocks and minerals (granite, calcite, etc.), while '-oid' follows the convention for things that resemble something else (asteroid — star-like; humanoid — human-like).

The adjective 'meteoric' has developed a vivid metaphorical life. A 'meteoric rise' describes someone who achieves fame or success with sudden, blazing speed — an apt metaphor, since a meteor is brief, brilliant, and attention-seizing. Less commonly noted is the implication that a meteoric rise, like a real meteor, may end in a crash. The metaphor captures both the brilliance and the brevity.

The PIE root *h₂wer- (to raise) also appears, through different pathways, in the English word 'aura' (from Greek 'aúra,' a breeze — air that is 'raised' or 'stirred') and in the Latin-derived 'aorta' (the great artery, from Greek 'aortḗ,' literally 'that which is hung up,' because the aorta was seen as suspended from the heart). Thus 'meteor,' 'aura,' and 'aorta' are distant etymological relatives, united by the ancient concept of lifting and suspension.