cometoidn.

1803 H. Brougham in Edinb. Rev. Jan. 430 Why not, for instance, call them Concentric Comets, or Planetary Comets, or Cometary Planets; or, if a single term must be found, why may we not coin such a phrase as Planetoid or Cometoid?

1861 D. Kirkwood in Danville Q. Rev. Dec. 635 It is an interesting fact that the motions of some luminous meteors—or cometoids, as perhaps they might be called—have been decidedly indicative of an origin beyond the limits of the planetary system.

1893 Yorks. Herald 19 Aug. 4/4 Hence the name of ‘cometoids’ is occasionally, and, no doubt, properly, applied to shooting stars.

1998 M. Littmann Heavens on Fire viii. 119 These ‘drops’ of ‘primitive nebular matter’—Kirkwood's words—produce sporadic meteors, and he proposed to call them ‘cometoids’.

1959 D. H. Robey in Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 5 Sept. 52/3 I define cometoid as a chunk of ice too small to be observed as a comet but too large to be entirely melted before it glides into the last few miles of air above Earth.

1977 R. A. Oriti in Sci. News 10 Dec. 387/3 It may yet turn out that several objects hitherto classified as asteroids may, in fact, be cometoids.

1994 J. Barnes Mother of Storms (1995) iii. 396 As had been confirmed by a couple of impact probes..2026RU is a cometoid, a ball of ice, about 790 miles across.

2007 G. L. Matloff et al. Living off Land in Space ii. 25 Beyond the Kuiper Belt cometoids is the Oort Cloud, the home range of perhaps a trillion comets.