a native or inhabitant of Earth; = earthling n.
In early use, ‘a human being; a mortal, in contrast with a divine entity’.
Heav’n that knows what all terrestrials need, Repose to night, and toil to day decreed.]
Meteors, Sir Gregory; which you terrestrials may gaze at, but cannot reach: a kind of rainbow, the splendor of which everybody admires, but nobody can equal.]
Varieties of effect altogether unfamiliar to us terrestrials.]
He gave me a cordial, welcoming smile, and held out his left hand to me [...] I thought it strange that these Marsians should be so like the terrestrials, not only in their forms and features, but in their very customs. Unquestionably they must have had a common origin, and at no extraordinary remote period either. How could this possibly have been? Was it possible that other terrestrials had anticipated me, and dared to traverse the interplanetary space before me?
The other was not a Terrestrial, but a visiting Martian. It was impossible to mistake the distinctly Martian cast of countenance. The great black horse eyes in the long, melancholy face, the elongated slightly pointed ears were proof enough. Martians in New York were not sufficiently rare to excite any particular comment. Many made that city their permanent home, although the law on the planet Earth, as well as on Mars, which forbade the intermarrriage of Martians and Terrestrials, kept them from flocking earthwards in any great numbers.
Lately the perihelion excursions have made the peculiar and terrifying atmospheric conditions of Aryl familiar to thousands of Terrestrials, but in 1998 this strange planet, whirling dizzily around the sun inside the orbit of Mercury, was practically unexplored.
In the actual conflict the Venusians had suffered more heavily than the Terrestrials, and thousands of them had been slain and others compelled to flee before the superior weapons of mankind.
Please use literate terminology for the names of planet dwellers. Let’s have no Mercutians, Venutians, Plutians, Jupiterians or Terrestrials running around. There are more accurate terms.
There’d been Earthling girls; and not a few Khazaki women had been intrigued by the big Terrestrial.
He said that ‘M-G’ meant ‘mutation-Ganymede’ and the other meant ‘normal terrestrial.’
He was the pilot and engineer, the only other Terrestrial on Mercury. When you dove this far down into the sun’s monstrous gravitational well, you couldn’t take a big crew along.
Mercer is not on Earth. I would guess that he is not a terrestrial at all.
We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It’s a terrestrial characteristic.
We believe the Moon was visited by terrestrials at least half a billion years before you two.
antedating 1925
Hugo Gernsback, 'Ralph 124 C 41 +'
Last modified 2022-02-22 21:57:53
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.