Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or formed by a meteoroid.
- adjective Of or relating to the earth's atmosphere.
- adjective Similar to a meteor in speed, brilliance, or brevity.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Of the upper air; ethereal; empyreal.
- Pertaining to or of the nature of a meteor; consisting of meteors: as, meteoric stones; meteoric showers.
- Flashing like a meteor; transiently or irregularly brilliant.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of or pertaining to a meteor, or to meteors; atmospheric
- adjective Influenced by the weather.
- adjective Flashing; transient and brilliant, like a meteor{3}.
- adjective (Min.) See
Meteorite . - adjective a substance of confervoid origin found floating in the air, and resembling bits of coarse paper; -- so called because formerly supposed to fall from meteors.
- adjective periodical exhibitions of shooting stars, occuring about the 9th or 10th of August and 13th of November, more rarely in April and December, and also at some other periods.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Of, pertaining to, or originating from a
meteor . - adjective Like a meteor in
speed ,brilliance , orephemeralness .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective of or pertaining to atmospheric phenomena, especially weather and weather conditions
- adjective like a meteor in speed or brilliance or transience
- adjective pertaining to or consisting of meteors or meteoroids
Etymologies
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Examples
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The men who now and then flash across our intellectual heavens, drawing all eyes for the moment, these I call meteoric men.
The Last Harvest John Burroughs 1879
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A politician's rapid rise to power is often called meteoric.
NYT > Home Page By THOMAS FULLER 2011
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A politician's rapid rise to power is often called meteoric.
NYT > Global Home By THOMAS FULLER 2011
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It wasn't long ago that Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's rise to the top of the Republican field of presidential candidates was called "meteoric."
News 2011
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His rise in the Senate was remarkable in its speed and depth, and would likely be the subject of closer attention had his fellow Senator, Barack Obama, not coined the meteoric rise only two years before.
Dylan Loewe: Why Jim Webb Should be Obama's Running Mate 2008
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His rise to front-runner is described as meteoric, his speeches as mesmerizing, his crowds as enraptured, his charisma as boundless.
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His rise to front-runner is described as meteoric, his speeches as mesmerizing, his crowds as enraptured, his charisma as boundless.
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Pukes, but is now a vast expanse of bare rock, from which every particle of soil and everything movable, including people, animals and vegetation, have been lifted by terrific cyclones and scattered afar, falling in other lands and at sea in the form of what was called meteoric dust!
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1 Ambrose Bierce 1878
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It was only a small black mass of what is now called meteoric iron, which sometimes comes down with meteorites from the sky, but it was shaped like a shield, and the people thought it an image of the warlike shielded Goddess, fallen from Heaven.
Tales of Troy: Ulysses, the sacker of cities Andrew Lang 1878
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When my fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, I had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected from that world to which I was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. In Two Volumes. Vol. II 1840
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