asteroid

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Coupling the nuclear blast energy to produce momentum recoil of the asteroid is the hard part.

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Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun Astronomy Any of numerous small celestial bodies that revolve around the sun, with orbits lying chiefly between Mars and Jupiter and characteristic diameters between a few and several hundred kilometers. Also called minor planet, planetoid.
  2. noun Zoology See starfish.
  3. adjective Star-shaped.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • The earth was struck by an asteroid, a huge amount of debris was jettisoned into the atmosphere. —  Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world
  • This asteroid was about 10 to 12 km in diameter, which is large, but less than 0.2\% the diameter of the Earth.
  • Waiting at the moon's L5 Lagrange point, the asteroid was a smooth blackish ball, heat-absorbing armor slathered deep over the surface of a fully infested cubic kilometer—a city where thousands of bodies squirmed about in freefall, thriving inside a maze of warm tunnels and airy rooms. —  FSF,April2008
  • A single glance at the asteroid was all it took to know that B was still too blazingly hot to risk direct exposure to it. —  Warhorse
  • Getting Alec off the asteroid was a solvable problem, immediate, without the ambiguity of the message the statues sent. —  Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January 2002
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From Greek asteroeidēs, starlike : astēr, star; see ster-3 in Indo-European roots + -oeidēs, -oid.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Greek ἀστεροειδής, star-like, from ἀστήρ, a star, + εἴδος, form.
 

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/ˈæstərɔɪd/
by American Heritage

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