a person who does not regularly travel in space
[extended from the aviation sense ‘a person who has never been in an airplane’ (1926 in OED)]
The simple truth is…that you’re a groundhog and a damned poor son-in-law for a spaceman.
Stevens streaked in after him, displaying a groundhog’s harmless pride in handling himself well in space conditions.
It is hard for a groundhog to dismiss the notion of weight.
What are you…get your hand off me you…you groundhog.
Spacers pick up careful habits…if they live long enough. Where a groundhog would have left the record for later, Brea always checked and double checked everything.
Even after the human race had moved into the near-Earth orbits, scattering their spindly factories and cylinder-cities and rock-hopping entrepreneurs, the human race was dominated by nay-saying groundhogs.
Sharing birth years was an old sport among spacers, although not between them and the groundhogs.
antedating 1940
Nelson S. Bond in Planet Stories
Last modified 2021-02-11 16:36:44
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.