comet
/ˈkɒmɪt/noun
comet is spelled C-O-M-E-T: 5 letters and 2 syllables. It appears 4.4 times per million words in written English, the 12,216th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, comet means “A small Solar System body consisting mainly of volatile ice, dust and particles of rock whose very eccentric solar orbit periodically brings it close…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of comet is comets.
How many letters and syllables are in comet?
| Letters | 5: C-O-M-E-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.4 times per million words; the 12,216th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is comet?
Comet appears 4.4 times per million words in written English, the 12,216th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce comet?
- /ˈkɒmɪt/
- /ˈkɑmət/
Comet has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-comet.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with comet?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as comet.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: comte.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of comet
- comets plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does comet mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A small Solar System body consisting mainly of volatile ice, dust and particles of rock whose very eccentric solar orbit periodically brings it close enough to the Sun that the ice vaporises to form an atmosphere, or coma, which may be blown by the solar wind to produce a visible tail.
- 2
A celestial phenomenon with the appearance of such a body.
- 3
Any of several species of hummingbird found in the Andes.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Comet in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense a celestial body, generally with a tail:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does comet come from?
From Middle English comete, partly from Old English comēta and partly from Old French comete, both from Latin comētēs, from Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs, “longhaired”), short for ἀστὴρ κομήτης ([astēr] komētēs, "longhaired [star])" and referring to the tail of a comet, from κόμη (kómē, “hair”). Compare English faxed star and Latin crīnīta stēlla (“comet”, literally “(long) haired star”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).