comet

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈkɒmɪt/, /ˈkɑmət/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English comete, partly inherited from Old English comēta and partly borrowed from Old French comete,^[2][3][4][5] from Latin comēta, from Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs, “long-haired”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from kómē “hair of the head”.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The full Greek phrase was astḗr komḗtēs “long-haired star”, from the resemblance of the tail to streaming hair.^[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A celestial body moving about the sun, with a bright head and a tail of light (1154).^[7]

Semantic evolution

The figurative name goes back to Aristotle, who used Greek kómē for the luminous tail and komḗtēs for the comet.^[2] Visible only near the sun, comets were long regarded as omens of disaster;^[4] Edmond Halley showed in 1682 that many return periodically.^[4] The word has been used figuratively from 1579.^[7] Wine made in a year of a notable comet, comet wine (1833), was reputed to be especially good.^[4]

Timeline

• 1154 – the celestial body.^[7]
• c. 1200 – Middle English comete (Barnhart, Etymonline).^[3][4]
• 1579 – figurative use.^[7]
• 1689 – an old card game (obsolete).^[7]
• 1833 – comet wine.^[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A celestial body made mainly of ice and dust, with a usually very eccentric orbit about the sun, which near the sun shows a fuzzy head round a bright nucleus and often one or more long tails.

Word family

• cometary
• cometic

Related words

• coma
• meteor
• asteroid

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press