Word.ws English Dictionary

this-worldly

this-worldly adjective: pertaining to or concerned with material human existence, as opposed to spiritual or religious matters.

Adjective

this-worldly (comparative more this-worldly, superlative most this-worldly)

  1. Pertaining to or concerned with material human existence, as opposed to spiritual or religious matters.
    • The guests were always this-worldly, and often profane.1883, Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
    • Changing attitudes to death and Hell mark a growth of this-worldly concerns in a large part of contemporary Christianity.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 1014

Antonyms of this-worldly

Forms of this-worldly

comparativemore this-worldly
superlativemost this-worldly

Origin of this-worldly

From this world + -ly; analogous to other-worldly.

Words formed from this-worldly

Questions about this-worldly

What does this-worldly mean?
This-worldly means pertaining to or concerned with material human existence, as opposed to spiritual or religious matters.
What part of speech is this-worldly?
This-worldly is an adjective.

Words near this-worldly in the dictionary

  1. this, that, and the other thing
  2. this, that, and the third
  3. this, that, or the other
  4. this-a-way
  5. this-worldliness
  6. this-worldly
  7. thisaway
  8. Thisbe
  9. Thisby
  10. thisclose
  11. thises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: this-worldly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “this-worldly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/this-worldly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.