Talk:Earthling

Capitalization

Does it have to be capitalised? My Oxford dictionary doesn't have it as such... Tooironic 12:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Earthling lesbian sense

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Tea_room/2021/January#Earthling_lesbian_sense.

Can anybody provide a good citation for the sense of Earthling meaning lesbian that is not from coverage of the TV show "The L Word" (originally titled "Earthlings")? Or testify to having heard it often? I hesitate to send slang senses to RFV because it's easy for them to be in widespread use and lack three durable uses. On the other hand, I'm suspicious about this being sufficiently widespread to have as a definition. Could be ingroup slang among a small group that happened to include the show's creator. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:30, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

I've never heard this, and after digging around for a while and having trouble even finding mentions, I think I figured out why. I found this cite, which references the TV show but which would be a use (except perhaps for one issue, which I'll get to):

• 2002, Curve: The Lesbian Magazine, volume 12, page 30:

  The story [Earthlings] is about a circle of lesbian friends living in Los Angeles. The code name - which will likely change by the time it airs - refers to a code word lesbians use when identifying their sisters, i.e.: "Is she an earthling; has she been to the planet?"

Other than that, the only uses of the term I was able to find where it seems to have this sense were in a non-durable Facebook group devoted to this (unrelated?) film. I see a few other books that are, or mention, stories where alien women help Earth's women with gay overtones, but in those "Earthling" seems to just mean "person from Earth". It also has an entry on Urban Dictionary, where it's been defined this way since March 2007, but not in any print slang dictionaries AFAICT. And I may have figured out why: this magazine article about the TV show seems to suggest (if I'm understanding correctly) that it's only slang for this within the show (WT:FICTION):

• The name was supposedly a reference to the common practice of asking, “Is she an earthling? Has she been to the planet?” as a way to determine if someone was a lesbian. That explanation made little sense to those who heard it until they were told the planet in question was actually The Planet, a West Los Angeles coffee bar owned by one of the show’s characters and frequented by lesbians. But the moniker was cumbersome and required too much explanation."

(This also suggests The Planet bar does not exist IRL.) - -sche (discuss) 17:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the research. I'm inclined to remove the sense as both unattestable and fictitious (i.e. belonging to a work of fiction without escaping to the real world). Thoughts? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:16, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I would remove it until/unless there are more cites. I didn't see any durable uses except the "is she an..." quote above. I do think that uses in three different fictional universes could attest a term (like Doctor Who and Star Trek and other sci-fi all using transmat; that's what labels like {{lb|en|science fiction}} are for), and maybe someone could find the script to see if the Codependent Lesbian Space Alien film uses the term this way, but even then that's just two cites. - -sche (discuss) 19:28, 8 January 2021 (UTC)