an (intelligent) being from a location other than one’s own, esp. such a being that is not from Earth
I am like a being thrown from another planet on this dark terrestrial ball, an alien, a pilgrim among its possessors.
Your position is a peculiar one—you are a prisoner and yet you give commands which must be obeyed; you are an alien and yet you are a Tharkian chieftain; you are a midget and yet you can kill a mighty warrior with one blow of your fist.
Arnim and Britt watched the ten-foot tall aliens stride across the short stretch of deck to the entrance lock of their own vessel. Around the waist of each a studded belt was clamped, its excresences showing where the individual gravity coils were inserted. Were it not for these the Martians would have been rising a hundred feet with each step, so small was the asteroid’s attraction.
Nearby, a group of intelligent aliens were cutting small growth and testing them with many forms of apparatus.
It is not for me to judge, nor to condemn, as to the manner in which the authorities acted when the Robot Aliens confronted human eyes, but I think that the mere reading of these facts will bring a flush of shame to many a man who had something to do with the welcome accorded our ambassadors from Mars.
The Robot Alien managed to convey to me that they were astonished beyond all measure at the fear the earth-people showed from the first.
Both aliens had seen him before, but only at a considerable distance. Talker’s chief surprise at the human form was that a being should support a mass about four times his own, against the relatively enormous gravity of Earth, on but two legs—though the legs, it is true, resembled tree trunks when compared to the stalklike limbs of the visitors.
When an alien arrives on an inhabited planet, there is usually only one way he can pass among the intelligent beings on that planet without being recognized for what he is.
The trouble is…that you have a word, ‘alien,’ and no concept to go with it.
In the novel Chad’s hero runs into humanoid aliens during his fishing jaunt in Colorado, and agrees to help them find a way back to their home planet.
They stared at each other—Earthman and alien.
If the problem was aliens from another world, Father Castelli would not be protected.
The aliens I was dealing with had complicated, irritable, niggling minds.
The troopers dashed forward, spaced in identity-preserving formations; perhaps they meant to take the alien alive.
What follows will trace how The X-Files was conceived and created as well as the process that allows a group of talented and dedicated producers, writers, directors, actors, and technical wizards to generate two dozen hours or more each year of contact with aliens, poltergeists, genetically engineered deviants, and even old-fashioned monsters—all with meticulous care and (in what has proven to be a constant struggle) within the constraints of a television budget.
Ther we were, the damned alien and I, me with my ouzi [sic] and he with his alien zapper, taking aim on a particularly slimy and fat slug.
It took off real fast, just like that…. Didn’t land. Wouldn’t that have been a hoot, a bunch of fucking aliens coming down for pie? But they didn’t. I always wanted to see an alien.
interdating 1820-1920
Earliest cite in the OED: 1953.
Last modified 2020-12-27 03:53:32
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.