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earthly

adjective · noun · adverb

Simple meaning

Of or belonging to or characteristic of this earth as distinguished from heaven.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

urthlee

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɝθli

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Of or belonging to or characteristic of this earth as distinguished from heaven

  2. Relating to the earth or this world, as opposed to heaven; terrestrial.

  3. Alternative letter-case form of earthly ("relating to the Earth").

  4. negativeinformal

    Used for emphasis

noun

  1. collective or in the plural

    That which is of the earth or earthly; a terrestrial being.

  2. ukcolloquial

    A slightest chance (of success etc.) or idea (about something).

adverb

  1. In an earthly manner.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Of or belonging to or characteristic of this earth as distinguished from heaven

Used this way, earthly is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • sublunary , rarer, so it draws attention
  • terrene , rarer, so it draws attention

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

earthly paradiseearthly lifeearthly powerearthly bodyearthly fatherearthly ministryearthly careerearthly city

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • earthnounBase word

    The 3rd planet from the sun.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • earthyadjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to Of or belonging to or characteristic of this earth as distinguished from heaven.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • earthly concernnounCompound term

    The concerns of this life as distinguished from heaven and the afterlife.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: that which is of the earth or earthly

terrestrial

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.