shooting star
[shooting ppl. a.; cf. G. schiessender stern.]
1. A meteor resembling a star, that darts across the sky. (Cf. falling star.)
| 1593 Shakes. Rich. II, ii. iv. 19. 1607 Lingua ii. vi, The shooting Starres Which in an eye-bright euening seem'd to fall. 1667 Milton P.L. iv. 557 Thither came Uriel, gliding..swift as a shooting Starr In Autumn thwarts the night. 1857 Rep. Brit. Assoc. i. 152 This instance, the rare one of an ascending shooting star. 1872 Proctor Ess. Astron. xi. 151 The November shooting-stars. |
| attrib. 1886 Ball Story of Heavens xviii. (1897) 378 The periodic shooting star shower known as the Leonids. |
2. U.S. A Western name for the American Cowslip,
Dodecatheon Meadia.
| 1856 A. Gray Man. Bot. 272 Dodecatheon Meadia... In the West called Shooting-Star. 1882 Garden 13 May 324/2, I send you..two varieties of Dodecatheon. These ‘Shooting Stars’, as they are called, are very effective. |