Otherworldly

//ˌʌðəˈwɜːldli// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of, concerned with, or preoccupied with a world different from the tangible world, especially a fantasy, imaginary, or mystical world.

    "In Just My Type: A Book about Fonts (2010) Simon Garfield describes [Edward] Johnston as 'a gaunt fine-boned man with a full moustache', and there's a picture of him at work with a quill pen that makes him look as other-worldly as a medieval sprite."

  2. 2
    Of, concerned with, or preoccupied with a world different from the tangible world, especially a fantasy, imaginary, or mystical world.; Odd and unfamiliar; strange, uncanny, weird. figuratively

    "He had not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost other-worldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon."

  3. 3
    Of, concerned with, or preoccupied with spiritual matters.

    "Every religion that becomes ascendant, in so far as it is not other-worldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the methods and administration of the law."

  4. 4
    Of or relating to the imagination or intellect. broadly, obsolete, rare

    "It is easy with the other-worldly gifts to be a schöne Seele [beautiful soul]; but to the large vision of [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe that seemed to be a phase of life that a man might feel all round and leave behind him."

Adjective
  1. 1
    existing outside of or not in accordance with nature wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
alienpreternaturalunworldlyairyalienangelic

Example

More examples

"It was Valentine's Day on the 14th of February of 2022, on Lulu Island. In the morning, I had pizza slices at the pizzeria, where Rose the Filipina was the regular vendor. In the afternoon, I drank black iced tea at the cafe, where I talked to my Anglo-Saxon neighbours Barb and Ken about travelling around this world, Mayan and Aztec pyramids in Mexico, the creole languages in the Caribbean, the otherworldly buildings in the Greek Islands, our common knowledge of prestigious French, and our experiences of the Pandemic, and then talked to Hans the Netherlander about the months-long adjustment phase of the new James Webb Space Telescope, the Jovian atmosphere with lightnings, artifacts of Ancient Egypt, lightning-made glass, and dinosaur bones. At the cafe, I noticed two different round-headed stocky men, who came in and out."

Etymology

From other world (“a world beyond death; a world other than the everyday world”) + -ly (suffix meaning having the likeness of, resembling forming adjectives).

Related phrases

here and now

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.