Earthly

How to spell earthly

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce earthly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does earthly mean?

1. adjectiveBelonging to the physical world or mortal life, as opposed to the spiritual; also used emphatically to mean conceivable or possible.

Earthly in a sentence

• The monks renounced earthly possessions and lived simply.

• There was no earthly reason for the flight to be cancelled in such clear weather.

Where does earthly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from native Old English, where eorþlic combined eorþe, meaning 'the ground, soil, or the world we live on', with the common adjective ending -lic, which conveyed 'having the nature or quality of'. That same -lic ending is the ancestor of the modern -ly we attach to countless adjectives, so earthly literally means 'of the earth' or 'worldly'. From its earliest uses it carried a contrast with the heavenly or spiritual, describing things bound to mortal, physical existence rather than the divine. Over the centuries it also developed an emphatic idiomatic sense in phrases such as 'no earthly reason', where it simply intensifies a negative. The spelling stays close to its root: keep the whole word 'earth' intact and add -ly, with the silent pattern of 'ear' and the 'th' inherited unchanged from the Old English form.

How the word is built

• earth (the ground, the world)
• -ly (adjective suffix: of the nature of)