Both the words meteor and meteorite are being used in the press today to describe the 'shower' in Russia. I have probably always used the words wrongly, so I looked up the difference. According to various scientific websites (I just stuck to the ones aimed at children), if the debris particles survive their fall through the atmosphere and actually hit the ground, then they are meteorites. Meteors, on the other hand, usually burn up in the atmosphere, so don't make it to Earth. Both meteors and meteorites are meteoroids.
The OED defines meteorite as "a fallen meteor", although, just to confuse matters it goes on to say "more generally: a meteor; a meteoroid". The word meteor entered English from Middle French, coming from the translated title of a treatise by Aristotle, Metheores. Originally, the word was a plural noun (metheours or meteora in Middle English), with the sense 'celestial phenomena'. The word meteorite entered English much later, only in the 19th century.
These days most people pronounce the word meteor with three syllables (meet-ee-or), but the OED tells us that up until the late 19th century (and later in some authoritative sources eg Daniel Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary) it was pronounced /ˈmiːtjə/ (meet-yer).
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