A meteor is the flash of light you see when space debris burns up in the atmosphere, while a meteorite is the actual piece of rock or metal that survives the fall and reaches the ground. So the streak overhead during a meteor shower is a meteor; the rock later dug out of the ice in Antarctica is a meteorite.
The core difference
A meteor is the light show in the sky; a meteorite is the surviving object on the ground.
- meteor — a streak of light from debris burning up in the atmosphere, a shooting star: We stayed up late to watch meteors streak across the sky during the shower.
- meteorite — a piece of rock or metal from space that survives the fall and lands on Earth: Scientists found a meteorite buried deep in the Antarctic ice.
How to tell them apart
The suffix is the memory hook: meteorite ends the same way as words like graphite and dolomite, suffixes often used for rocks and minerals, and a meteorite is indeed the rock that is left over. A meteor, by contrast, is only ever the light in the sky, not an object you could pick up.
The mix-up shows up most often in casual conversation about meteor showers, where people say a meteorite fell when what they actually saw was the meteor's flash; most meteors burn up completely and never become a meteorite at all.
