Long-haired ne'erdowells

... coming into our skies whenever it suits them and then going off to Find Themselves a few billion  miles away, then coming back when they please.

The Greek for a comet was '(aster) kometes, literally "long-haired (star)," from kome "hair of the head"' . That quote is from good ol' Etymonline, and this blog has mentioned before (here) the tendency for nouns in Noun Phrases to be dropped, leaving just the adjective as a new noun.

<digression>
I wonder if Bill Haley was a classics scholar: but his backing group The Comets weren't notably long-haired. Everybody assumes the name is a play on the name 'Haley', but wouldn't it be cool if the Halley angle was only coincidental (apart from depending on a mispronunciation)?
<digression>

Meteor, on the other hand,  is ultimately   from meta- "over, beyond" (see meta-) + -aoros "lifted, hovering in air," (the metaphorical name referring to what it does rather than what it looks like). And rather than whizzing around aimlessly like long-haired comets they actually fall to earth.

<digression>
So why aren't 'meteoric rise's out-numbered by 'meteoric fall's? BNC has this:

1		METEORIC RISE	30
2		METEORIC WATER	5
3		METEORIC CAREER	2
4		METEORIC VADOSE	2
5		METEORIC ZONES	1

And a few more with only a single hit. No falls at all.
</digression>

Oh well. Nearly time to go and watch the landing of Rosetta No, Philae of course – I should just squeeze in an hour's lupiportal exclusion (that's 'keeping the wolf from the door).

<digression>
Oh, and I meant to ask: was the landing timed to mark the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down? The reunification was extraordinarily and unexpectedly well managed.

<autobiographical_note>
I remember, in a bedtime reading session, trying to explain the importance of the event in terms of the politics of Narnia – 'like the evil queen making friends with Aslan.'
</autobiographical_note>

</digression>

b
Update 2014.11.12.18:20 – Correction in the colour of shame.
Update 2014.11.13.14:20 – Added PS
PS Well done folks,  but it'll be a shame if after a 10 year wait Philae spins off after a few days. Latest scare is that it may have landed somewhere too dark to use its solar cells. Look on the bright side though; with any luck it'll slide into the light.

<sidebar>
Does a French countdown really end '...deux, un, top', and if so why?
</sidebar>

Meanwhile, back at the metaphors for heavenly bodies, here's (some of) what Etymonline
has to say about planet:

[Ultimately]...from Greek planetes, from (asteres) planetai "wandering (stars)," from planasthai "to wander," of unknown origin, possibly from PIE *pele- (2) "flat, to spread" on notion of "spread out." So called because they have apparent motion, unlike the "fixed" stars. 

So whereas a meteor 'whizzes about up there' a planet just 'wanders'. A bit lame, really. More anon, but I have some stuff that won't wait.

Update 2014.11.14.09:55 – Added PPS

PPS Today's heavenly body is 'star'. This is one of those words that starts with a consonant cluster that is problematic for some speakers;  and languages made up of those speakers introduce a 'run-up' vowel to smooth the way – the $10 word is epenthetic, and I discussed it here. A star was an aster in Greek but stella in Latin, and the Greek a- is epenthetic. In Spanish estrella (and I may once have known where the 'r' came from); Italian – stella; Catalan – estrella; Romanian – stea... Romance languages 'swing both ways' on this point. One language family that predictably didn't need that 'run-up' vowel was Germanic (I think  – this is an open goal for any Germanic philologist out there).  So the German journal Stern ought, if there were any etymological justice in the world, to be a sister-journal of our Daily Star. Maybe it is, but somehow I doubt it.

That's all for now. I have a memory about the magazine Motor Sport, in connection with the job (mentioned in passing here) that got me arrested, but it'll have to wait.

Update 2014.11.20.15:55 – Added PPPS
PPPS  – wheel reinvention not required. I recalled it here:

<autobiographical_note date_range=1971>
In my youth I spent a few months selling magazine subscriptions, as mentioned in a previous post. The publishers bolstered the advertising sales of lesser-known titles by bundling them with big names. So Caza y Pesca and Blanco y Negro were thrown in when you bought a subscription to Newsweek.

One of the English titles that I had for sale was Motor Sport. So  into my fairly competent spiel (I had learned the necessary Spanish off pat) I dropped these three totally unrecognizable syllables: /məʊtəspɔ:t/. The Spanish for 'Motor Sport' included an /r/ sounded before the epenthetic vowel that precedes the outlandish^‡ consonant cluster /sp/.

          ^‡Outlandish, that is, at the beginning of a [BK added in Nov. '14 update: Spanish] word. 

</autobiographical_note>

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