sublunary

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   literary: belonging to this earthly world rather than to heaven or a spiritual realm

   The philosopher set aside celestial questions to discuss sublunary politics.

2. 2
   adj

   situated beneath the moon or between the earth and the moon

   Older cosmology treated the sublunary region as a realm of constant change.

A learned formation from Late Latin sublunaris, from sub- ('below') + lunaris ('lunar, of the moon'), with English -ary. In Aristotelian and medieval cosmology, the mutable world below the moon was distinguished from the supposedly perfect heavens, giving sublunary its literary sense 'earthly or worldly.'

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