Leonid
//ˈliː.ə.nɪd// name, noun
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any meteor of a meteor shower that appears to radiate from the constellation Leo in November.
"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."
Proper Noun
- 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).
Example
More examples"On the night of November 16, 1966, the Leonid meteor shower, which occurs in November of each year, rained down on Arizona at the rate of 2300 meteors per minute for a 20 minute period."
Etymology
Etymology 1
From Latin Leō (“lion; the constellation Leo”, stem Leōn-) + -id.
Etymology 2
Borrowed from Macedonian and Russian Леони́д (Leoníd) or Ukrainian Леоні́д (Leoníd), from Ancient Greek Λεωνίδας (Leōnídas). Cognate with the English historical name Leonidas.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.