Bolides

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A celestial object, such as a meteor or asteroid, that can create a bright flash and impact the Earth's atmosphere
2. A large, usually bright meteor that travels through space and can explode in the atmosphere
3. A term used in astronomy to refer to significant space rocks that enter the Earth's gravitational field and exhibit visible luminosity

Etymology: "Bolides" is the plural of "bolide", which English borrowed from French, where the word came to name a fiery meteor. Its ancestor is the Ancient Greek "bolís", meaning missile, arrow or javelin, a thing hurled through the air. The Romans took the term into Latin as "bolis", and it kept that sense of something flung or shot. The Greek root belongs to a family built around throwing, so the word's core idea is motion through space rather than fire or light. The bright flash that gives modern bolides their name is a later association, because the object's blazing passage across the sky looks like a projectile in flight. The English term therefore preserves the older image of a thrown object, now aimed at the heavens.