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by paulddraper 28 days ago
Eh, that doesn't make sense.

What's a meteor?

1 comments

The streak of light generated by a small astronomical body as it moves through the atmosphere of earth (or another astronomical body).
Meteoroid then.

Asteroids and meteoroids are the same, except for where they are positions.

Mothers and women are the same, except for their relationships to others.

And notice how we have those two different words - mother and woman? You can have words that describe relationships, in fact that is really good! You can even compound words or create whole new ones to encompass multiple types of attributes! What we should avoid is taking widely used words and changing the definition to add a criterion that is of a whole other type of attribute.

Your mother and woman example is perfect! It would not be appropriate to most people to change the definition of woman to a female that had or has an offspring. You are taking a definition that describes an attribute of the subject (gender) and throwing in criteria that is based on a relationship. That makes no sense!

If it is important for you to make a distinction on whether an astronomical body has cleared its neighborhood then you can create a new word or compound word.