telluric means pertaining to the Earth, earthly. It carries an Arena rating of 1454, earned across 7 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, telluric ranks #3,471 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #3,572 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words, #4,618 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #4,863 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
Why “telluric” is a great word
Pertaining to or derived from the Earth. From French tellurique, from Latin tellus ("earth") and -ique (adjective-forming suffix); the sense relating to the element tellurium derives from tellurium + -ic. Unlike "terrestrial," which catalogues life upon the crust, or "mundane," which reduces the worldly to the ordinary, "telluric" evokes the chthonic and the planetary. It is the warmth of granite under a hand on a mountainside, the low-frequency hum felt through bedrock, and the ancient strata of shale that remember a younger world—a reminder that we are not merely on the Earth, but of it, passengers on a sphere of molten stone.
Etymology
A borrowing of French tellurique, from Latin tellus (“earth; earthy”) and Tellus (“Earth, Gaia”) and -ique (forming adjectives). Subsequently also from tellurium, originally in telluric oxide from German Telluroxyd.
adj
- Pertaining to the Earth, earthly.e.g.“My sister always says she loves novels where you feel an elemental strength, primordial, telluric.” — 1981, Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler:
- Containing tellurium in a lower valency than in tellurous compounds.
noun
- Synonym of telluric current.e.g.“Other projects in progress at CRPL involve the study of audiofrequency tellurics (current induced in the earth) and earth conductivity measurements using atmospherics.” — 1964, United States. National Bureau of Standards, Technical News Bulletin, volumes 48-49, page 131:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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