Le"o*nid (lē"&osl;*n&ibreve;d), n. [From Leo: cf. F. léonides, pl.] (Astron.) One of the shooting stars which constitute the star shower that recurs near the fourteenth of November at intervals of about thirty-three years; -- so called because these shooting stars appear on the heavens to move in lines directed from the constellation Leo.

• one of a shower of meteorites which fall from the area of sky around the constellation Leo in November
       *1974: I wrote my first story about the ghost of a horse leaping from a cascade of flame just after the leonids had been more torrential than men had remembered them for centuries. — Guy Davenport, Tatlin!