Dictionary

Leonid en · NOUN · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• /ˈliː.ə.nɪd/

Etymology

From Latin Leō (“lion; the constellation Leo”, stem Leōn-) + -id.

Meanings

1. Any meteor of a meteor shower that appears to radiate from the constellation Leo in November.
   • 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. 1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian […] , →OCLC:
   • 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. 2001, WG Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell, Austerlitz, Penguin, published 2011, page 141:
   • 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. 1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!:

Forms

Leonid en · PROPN · etymology 2

Etymology

Borrowed from Macedonian and Russian Леони́д (Leoníd) or Ukrainian Леоні́д (Leoníd), from Ancient Greek Λεωνίδας (Leōnídas). Cognate with the English historical name Leonidas.

Meanings

1. 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).