COMET

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does comet mean? 

• COMET (noun)
  The noun COMET has 1 sense:

1. (astronomy) a relatively small extraterrestrial body consisting of a frozen mass that travels around the sun in a highly elliptical orbit

  Familiarity information: COMET used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMET (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(astronomy) a relatively small extraterrestrial body consisting of a frozen mass that travels around the sun in a highly elliptical orbit

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("comet" is a kind of...):

estraterrestrial body; extraterrestrial object (a natural object existing outside the earth and outside the earth's atmosphere)

Meronyms (parts of "comet"):

coma ((astronomy) the luminous cloud of particles surrounding the frozen nucleus of a comet; forms as the comet approaches the sun and is warmed)

nucleus ((astronomy) the center of the head of a comet; consists of small solid particles of ice and frozen gas that vaporizes on approaching the sun to form the coma and tail)

Domain category:

astronomy; uranology (the branch of physics that studies celestial bodies and the universe as a whole)

Derivation:

cometary; cometic (of or relating to or resembling a comet)

 Context examples 

ROSINA, which stands for Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis, collected data from 67P for two years as Rosetta orbited the comet.

(Astronomers Reveal Interstellar Thread of One of Life’s Building Blocks, ESO)

A newly discovered comet has excited the astronomical community this week because it appears to have originated from outside the solar system.

(Newly Discovered Comet Is Likely Interstellar Visitor, NASA)

A small, recently discovered asteroid — or perhaps a comet — appears to have originated from outside the solar system, coming from somewhere else in our galaxy.

(Small Asteroid or Comet 'Visits' from Beyond the Solar System, NASA)

Rosetta also will be the first spacecraft to witness at close proximity how a comet changes as it is subjected to the increasing intensity of the sun's radiation.

(Rosetta closing in on comet, NASA)

They were stars, I knew, and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe is approaching Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for a historic mission to orbit and land on the comet's nucleus.

(Rosetta Comet May Be a Contact Binary, NASA)

The star appears to be circled by a huge disc of debris, which could suggest the worlds are being regularly hit by asteroids and comets.

(Potentially Habitable 'Super-Earths' Found Orbiting around Sun's near Neighbor, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

There are great critics, but they are as rare as comets.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

They have observed ninety-three different comets, and settled their periods with great exactness.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Then Sherlock Holmes cocked his eye at me, leaning back on the cushions with a pleased and yet critical face, like a connoisseur who has just taken his first sip of a comet vintage.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)