Meaning & use
extraterrestrial
Last updated
Meanings
adjectivenot comparable
Coming from or found beyond the planet Earth.
Grammar: Usually before a noun: extraterrestrial life, an extraterrestrial signal.
Patterns
- extraterrestrial life
- extraterrestrial origin
Astronomers are searching for extraterrestrial life.
The rock was shown to be of extraterrestrial origin.
The film imagines an extraterrestrial visitor in a small town.
nouncountable
A living being, real or imagined, that comes from another planet.
Grammar: Countable, often shortened to ET or alien: an extraterrestrial.
Patterns
- an extraterrestrial from somewhere
The child drew a friendly extraterrestrial with big eyes.
Many stories imagine extraterrestrials landing on Earth.
He claims he met an extraterrestrial in the desert.
Word forms
| plural | extraterrestrials |
|---|
Common combinations
- extraterrestrial life
- No one has found extraterrestrial life yet.
- extraterrestrial intelligence
- The project listens for extraterrestrial intelligence.
- extraterrestrial visitors
- The story is about extraterrestrial visitors.
- extraterrestrial origin
- The meteorite has an extraterrestrial origin.
- extraterrestrial civilization
- Could an extraterrestrial civilization exist near another star?
Synonyms and how they differ
- alien
- Alien is the common everyday word for a being from space, and also means foreign, which extraterrestrial does not.
- outer-space
- Outer-space, as in outer-space creatures, is informal and describes only location, while extraterrestrial is more scientific.
- Martian
- Martian refers only to Mars, while extraterrestrial covers anywhere beyond Earth.
- cosmic
- Cosmic relates to the universe in general and does not imply living beings.
Opposites
Word family
- terrestrial adjective
- relating to the Earth or land
- extraterrestrially adverb
- in a way that relates to places beyond Earth, rare
- ET noun
- informal short form of extraterrestrial
- extraterritorial adjective
- outside a country's territory, a different word
Commonly confused: extraterrestrial or extraterritorial? extraterrestrial or extrasensory?
extraterrestrial vs extraterritorial
Extraterritorial relates to legal exemption from a territory's laws, not to space.
extraterrestrial vs extrasensory
Extrasensory refers to perception beyond the normal senses, as in ESP.
Practice
Scientists announced that the dust sample was of ___ origin, meaning it came from beyond Earth.
Choose one answer.
Extraterrestrial means coming from outside Earth. Terrestrial means the opposite, from Earth.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “extraterrestrial”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.