English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈliːənɪd/

Noun

Leonid ‎(plural Leonids)

1. Each of a shower of meteorites which fall from the area of sky around 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 MacCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West:

     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, Anthea Bell, translating WG Sebald, Austerlitz, Penguin 2011, p. 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

From Russian Леони́д ‎(Leoníd), from Ancient Greek Λεωνίδας ‎(Leōnídas). Cognate with the English historical name Leonidas.

Proper noun

Leonid

1. A male given name, a transliteration of a common Russian name.

Anagrams

• dienol, indole