terrestrial

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English terrestrial, also terrestrialle and terestial,^[2] borrowed from Latin terrestris (“earthly, of the earth, on land”) with the English suffix -al added;^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} the MED also allows terrestre as the base.^[2] The Latin adjective comes from terra (“earth”),^{[3][4][9][10]} which Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace to Proto-Indo-European *ters- (“to dry”).^[4][9] The OED compares the obsolete Middle French terrestriel (16th century), and the MED cites Old French terrestriel (about 1500).^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Earthly as opposed to heavenly; worldly or secular: Barnhart dates it before 1387, in Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon,^[5] but the MED's first quotation is Paradise terrestrialle, the earthly paradise, in the second Middle English translation of the same work (before about 1425), where Trevisa's text has only Paradys.^[2] The OED's first record is about 1460,^[3] and Etymonline dates it to the late 14th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word first described this world as opposed to heaven, the earthly as against the celestial.^[3][4][8] Hoad dates the sense "earthly, mundane" to the 15th century and "relating to the earth" to the 16th,^[10] when Shakespeare wrote of the terrestrial ball in Richard II (1597) and the terrestrial globe became the name of a map of the earth on a globe (1559).^[3] From 1628 it distinguished the land from the sea,^[3] and in natural history from 1638 it described animals that live on land rather than in water or in the air,^[3][4] and since 1829 plants that grow in the soil.^[3] Astronomers applied it from 1888 to planets like the Earth in size or composition.^[3][4] An obsolete sense, "earthy, of the nature of soil", ran from 1594 to 1757.^[3] The noun, an inhabitant of the earth, a mortal, is found in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (1602),^[3] the 1590s in Etymonline.^[4] Terrestrial television means broadcasting from transmitters on land rather than by satellite.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – Paradise terrestrialle, the earthly paradise.^[2]
• c. 1460 – earthly, worldly, as opposed to heavenly.^[3]
• 1559 – terrestrial globe, a globe with a map of the earth.^[3]
• 1597 – relating to the earth, in Shakespeare's terrestrial ball.^[3]
• 1602 – noun, an inhabitant of the earth, a mortal.^[3]
• 1628 – relating to land as distinct from water.^[3]
• 1638 – of animals, living on land.^[3][4]
• 1829 – of plants, growing in the soil.^[3]
• 1888 – of planets, similar to the Earth.^[3][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to the earth or its inhabitants: terrestrial magnetism.^[11][12][3]
2. Of or relating to land as distinct from the sea or the air.^[11][3]
3. Of animals and plants, living or growing on land or in the soil rather than in water or trees: terrestrial mammals.^[11][3]
4. Earthly or worldly as opposed to heavenly; mundane.^[11][3]
5. Of a planet, like the Earth in size or composition.^[3]
6. Of television broadcasting, sent from transmitters on land rather than by satellite.^[11]

Noun

1. An inhabitant of the earth; a human being or mortal.^[12][3][4]
2. A plant or animal that lives on land.^[12]

Word family

• terrestrially
• terrestrialness
• extraterrestrial
• circumterrestrial
• nonterrestrial
• preterrestrial
• semiterrestrial
• unterrestrial

Related words

• terrain
• terrace
• territory
• terrene
• celestial

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster