Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "earth" [earth]

  • The land surface of the world. (noun)
  • The softer, friable part of land; soil, especially productive soil. (noun)
  • The third planet from the sun, having a sidereal period of revolution about the sun of 365.26 days at a mean distance of approximately 149 million kilometers (92.96 million miles), an axial rotation period of 23 hours 56.07 minutes, an average radius of 6,378 kilometers (3,963 miles), and a mass of approximately 5.974 × 1024 kilograms (1.317 × 1025 pounds). (noun)
  • The realm of mortal existence; the temporal world. (noun)
  • The human inhabitants of the world: The earth received the news with joy. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "earth" in a sentence
  • "Very strangely to the ears of the bystanders sounded the words of the Bible, accompanying the handful of earth as it was cast upon Púshkin -- "_earth thou art! _""
  • "There ought to be, therefore, a greater escape of electricity from the clouds upwards than downwards; and, if space be void, or only filled with an extremely attenuated matter, the electricity of the earth, considered as an elastic fluid without ponderosity, (and no law of condensation from the law of gravity in harmony with its other attributes, will allow us to consider it otherwise,) _would long since have left the earth_."
  • "'_And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth_.'"