meteor
part of speech
noun (a meteor, meteors)
meaning for a pupil
1) A streak of light in the night sky made when a small piece of rock or dust from space burns up in the air; a shooting star. tree →
2) The piece of space rock itself as it falls through the air. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons about space: a meteoroid is the rock in space, a meteor is the bright streak as it burns, and a meteorite is a piece that lands on the ground. A «meteor shower» is many meteors at once. Phrases: meteor shower, shooting star, a meteor shot across the sky.
examples
- We saw a meteor flash across the sky. tree →
- A meteor is also called a shooting star. tree →
- Most meteors burn up before they hit the ground. tree →
- We stayed up late to watch the meteor shower. tree →
- A meteor that reaches the ground is called a meteorite. tree →
- Make a wish when you see a meteor! tree →
- Scientists study meteors to learn about space. tree →
- The meteor left a glowing trail. tree →
- A shooting star lit up the sky, and the boy's thoughts passed in a second from the vapours of the earth up to the shining meteor. tree →
note
Countable: meteors. Myth: a shooting star is not a star at all — it is a tiny rock burning up. Related: meteorite, meteoroid. Trap: «meteorology» is about weather, not meteors.
In the corpora
- Meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through trails of dust left by comets, such as the Perseids every August.
- Meteors enter the air at between about 11 and 72 kilometres per second, many times faster than a bullet.
- Most meteors glow and burn out between about 70 and 120 kilometres up, far above aeroplanes and clouds.
- Meteor Crater in Arizona, about 1.2 kilometres wide, was blasted out roughly 50,000 years ago.
- A shooting star is not a star but a meteor: a speck of space rock burning up in the air.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «meteor» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.