terraqueous

English

Etymology

(deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin terra (the earth) + aqueous (the water).

Adjective

terraqueous (not comparable)

1. Of a celestial body: comprising both land and water, like the Earth.
2. Consisting of or involving earth and water.
   • 1829, Andrew Ure, A New System of Geology, in Which the Great Revolutions of the Earth and Animated Nature, are Reconciled at Once to Modern Science and Sacred History, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, Book II, Chapter V, p. 341, [1]

     Thus the vicissitudes of the land and ocean, portrayed in the tertiary formations, harmonise perfectly with other terraqueous phenomena of the same geological period.

   • 1884, John Addington Symonds "Stella Maris," sonnet LIV in Vagabunduli Libellus, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., p. 64, [2]

     Spirit of light and darkness! I no less / Twy-natured, but of more terraqueous mould, / In whom conflicting powers proportion hold / With poise exact, before thy proud excess / Of beauty perfect and pure lawlessness / Quail self-confounded; neither nobly bold / To dare for thee damnation, nor so cold / As to endure unscathed thy fiery stress.

   • 1892, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Chapter XLIII, [3]

     […] strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures with tragical eyes—eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered.

   • 1975, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Men of Maize, translated by Gerald Martin, Delacorte, p. 138,

     When the projectile fell in the mortar with the end of the fuse left outside like a rat's tail, others, more experienced, put the brand to it and ... boom ... boom ... boom ... violent terraqueous explosions, followed by booming detonations high up in a vast sky now full of stars.

Translations

Comprising land and water

• French: terraqué (fr)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Italian: terracqueo (it) m
• Spanish: terráqueo (es) m

References

• “terraqueous”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.