Leonid
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English
Etymology 1
Leo + -n- + -id. From the constellation of Leo.
Pronunciation
Noun
Leonid (plural Leonids)
- Any meteor of a meteor shower that appears to radiate from the constellation Leo in November.
- 1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!:
- I wrote my first story about the ghost of a horse leaping from a cascade of flame just after the leonids had been more torrential than men had remembered them for centuries.
- 1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian , →OCLC:
- Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.
- 2001, WG Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell, Austerlitz, Penguin, published 2011, page 141:
- I was surprised by […] the unusually tall windows, […] through which long telescopes were once turned on eclipses of the sun and the moon, on the intersections of the orbits of the stars with the line of the meridian, on the Leonid meteorite showers and the long-tailed comets flying through space.
Etymology 2
Borrowed from Russian Леони́д (Leoníd) or Ukrainian Леоні́д (Leoníd), from Ancient Greek Λεωνίδας (Leōnídas). Cognate with the English historical name Leonidas.
Proper noun
Leonid
- A male given name, a transliteration of a common East Slavic name (notably that of the first two Ukrainian presidents, Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma, as well as Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev).