- earthly
- earthly, terrestrial, earthy, mundane, worldly, sublunary are comparable when they mean of, belonging to, or characteristic of the earth.Earthly is used chiefly in opposition to heavenly{
earthly love
}{the earthly paradise
}{if I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?— Jn 3:12
}{a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience— Shak.
}{there could be a new order, based on vital harmony, and the earthly millennium might approach— Forster
}Terrestrial is sometimes used in place of earthly as a more sonorous term; frequently, however, it implies an opposition to celestial rather than to heavenly (see CELESTIAL){a terrestrial globe
}{a terrestrial telescope
}or it may imply a distinction of earth from the other planets{terrestrial magnetism
}{whose vision is cosmic, not terrestrial— Lowes
}{carbon dioxide is, of course, of great importance in long-wave terrestrial radiation, but plays a minor role in solar radiation absorption— Compendium of Meteorology
}or more specifically in astronomy, a distinction of certain planets assumed to be like the earth from others assumed to be unlike the earth{the terrestrial planets are Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury
}{there are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another— 1 Cor 15:40
}{when from under this terrestrial ball he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines— Shak
}Terrestrial in some use suggests land as a habitat, rather than water or trees{terrestrial reptiles
}{terrestrial plants
}{they will still obey natural laws and, if manned, they will still be manned by normal, terrestrial airmen— Time
}Earthy, in the historical development of its senses, has stressed a connection with the earth as soil rather than the earth as the abode of men{an earthy smell
}Even when it comes close to earthly in its meaning, it carries a stronger implication of grossness of substance or of material interests than earthly and is opposed more to spiritual than to heavenly{the first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven— I Cor 15:47
}{my anger and disgust at his gross earthy egoism had vanished— Hudson
}{with much earthy dross in her, she was yet preeminently a creature of "fire and air"— Buchan
}Mundane and worldly both imply a relationship to the world thought of as the affairs, concerns, and activities of human beings especially as they are concentrated on practical ends or on immediate pleasures. Mundane specifically suggests an opposition to what is eternal and stresses transitoriness or impermanence{mundane glory
}{there I quaff the elixir and sweet essence of mundane triumph— L. P. Smith
}{Tony knew that she did not allow them to talk of mundane affairs on these expeditions to and from church— Archibald Marshall
}{the occupations and distractions of mundane life— Harold Nicolsony
}Worldly, which is applied chiefly to persons and their interests, specifically implies indifference to things of the spirit and concentration on whatever satisfies one's love of success, one's desire for pleasure, or one's self-esteem{the obvious thing to say of her was that she was worldly; cared too much for rank and society and getting on in the world— Woolf
}{the most worldly of the eighteenth-century ecclesiastics— Belloc
}Sublunary is a distinctly literary or poetic term variously interchangeable with earthly, mundane, and terrestrial{all things sublunary are subject to change— Dry den
}{what then would matter the quakes and sublunary conflicts of this negligible earth?— L. P. Smith
}Analogous words: temporal, *profane, secular: *material, physical, corporeal
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
