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unearthly

[uhn-urth-lee]
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adjective
  1. seeming not to belong to this earth or world: unearthly beauty.
  2. supernatural; ghostly; unnaturally strange; weird: an unearthly scream.
  3. out of the ordinary; unreasonable or absurd: to get up at an unearthly hour.
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Origin of unearthly

First recorded in 1605–15; un-1 + earthly
Related formsun·earth·li·ness, noun

Synonyms

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2. preternatural, spectral. See weird.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words

abnormal, absurd, appalling, devilish, eerie, ethereal, extraordinary, fiendish, frightening, funereal, ghastly, ghostly, ghoulish, hair-raising, haunted, heavenly, miraculous, nightmarish, phantom, preternatural

Examples from the Web for unearthly

Historical Examples

  • It was motionless as marble; but never had she seen anything so beautiful, and so unearthly.

    Philothea

    Lydia Maria Child

  • "What an unearthly hour," he said, unable to check the yawns.

  • When first I saw the donkey I saw him in the sunlight as the unearthly gargoyle that he is.

    Alarms and Discursions

    G. K. Chesterton

  • The steel-shod sides were bathed in an unearthly orange glow.

    Pirates of the Gorm

    Nat Schachner

  • It covered the dawn, the clouding and the unearthly sunset of a hope.

British Dictionary definitions for unearthly

unearthly

adjective
  1. ghostly; eerie; weirdunearthly screams
  2. heavenly; sublimeunearthly music
  3. ridiculous or unreasonable (esp in the phrase unearthly hour)
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Derived Formsunearthliness, noun
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for unearthly

adj.

1610s, "heavenly, sublime," from un- (1) "not" + earthly. Sense of "ghostly, weird" first recorded 1802. Related: Unearthliness.

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper