earth

pronunciation

How to pronounce earth in British English: UK [ɜːθ] word uk audio image

How to pronounce earth in American English: US [ɜːrθ] word us audio image

Noun:

the loose soft material that makes up a large part of the land surface
the solid part of the earth's surface
once thought to be one of four elements composing the universe (Empedocles)
the concerns of the world as distinguished from heaven and the afterlife
a connection between an electrical device and the earth (which is a zero voltage)
Verb:

hide in the earth like a hunted animal
connect to the earth

Word Origin

earth: earth: [OE] Earth comes ultimately from an Indo- European base *er-. This produced the prehistoric Germanic noun *erthō, ancestor of German erde, Dutch aarde (whence, via early Afrikaans, English aardvark [19], literally ‘earth-pig’), Swedish and Danish jord, and English earth. Related forms outside Germanic include Greek eraze ‘on the ground’ and Welsh erw ‘field’. The word’s basic range of modern senses, ‘ground’, ‘world’, and ‘soil’, all date back to the Old English period.=> aardvark

earth (n.): Old English eorþe "ground, soil, dirt, dry land; country, district," also used (along with middangeard) for "the (material) world, the abode of man" (as opposed to the heavens or the underworld), from Proto-Germanic *ertho (cognates: Old Frisian erthe "earth," Old Saxon ertha, Old Norse jörð, Middle Dutch eerde, Dutch aarde, Old High German erda, German Erde, Gothic airþa), from extended form of PIE root *er- (2) "earth, ground" (cognates: Middle Irish -ert "earth"). The earth considered as a planet was so called from c. 1400. Use in old chemistry is from 1728. Earth-mover "large digging machine" is from 1940.

earth (v.): "to commit (a corpse) to earth," late 14c., from earth (n.). Related: Earthed; earthing.