eorðlic

Eorðlic is an Old English adjective meaning earthly or terrestrial, with senses that include the material, mundane, or corporeal as opposed to spiritual or celestial. In usage it could describe things pertaining to the world of matter, human experience, or ordinary life, as well as things connected with the earth itself. The term often carries a sense of something grounded in the physical world rather than in the realm of the divine.

The form eorðlic is built from the word eorð, meaning earth, plus the common Germanic adjectival suffix -lic, which conveys “having the quality of” or “like.” This productive suffix appears in many Old English derivatives to describe various attributes, producing a range of terms that contrast with more transcendent or sacred counterparts such as heavenly or divine expressions.

In Old English texts, eorðlic appears in contexts where authors distinguish worldly matters from spiritual concerns, or where physical reality and mortality are foregrounded. Its semantic range can extend from the literal sense of belonging to the earth to a broader sense of secular or mortal realities. The word survives today chiefly in linguistic and philological discussions of Old English vocabulary, and its modern descendant in English is the word earthly, which retains a similar sense of being related to the physical world or to worldly concerns.

Overall, eorðlic exemplifies the Old English practice of forming adjectives with -lic to express qualitative relations, linking the earth or physical existence with human experience and everyday life.