Earth & SkyGreek → English
Comet
/ˈkɑmɪt/noun
A body of ice and dust that grows a glowing tail as it nears the sun.
The Greek roots
κόμη
kómē
hair of the head
Literally: “the long-haired one”
Follow a root:κόμη1 word
The story of the word
The Greek phrase is κομήτης ἀστήρ, the star with long hair, describing the tail as a loose mane. Aristotle put comets in the upper atmosphere rather than among the stars, and that classification held until Tycho Brahe's parallax measurements in 1577 pushed them beyond the moon and broke the crystalline spheres with them. Astronomers still call the fuzzy cloud around the nucleus the coma, from the same hair word; the coma of unconsciousness is a different Greek word entirely, κῶμα, deep sleep.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
comacometary
In a sentence
The comet was visible for six weeks, faint but unmistakable above the rooftops.