sublunary

Oct. 21st, 2021 08:22 am
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sublunary (SUHB-loo-ner-ee, suhb-LOO-nuh-ree) - adj., beneath the moon; situated between the earth and the moon; of the earth, terrestrial; mundane, worldly.


In Aristotelian cosmology, the heavenly sphere below the moon's, which includes the earth, is mutable, with the four elements intermixing and changing, while all the spheres above are unchangeable. Thus John Donne's use in "A Valediction: Forbidding Morning":
Dull sublunary lovers' love
    (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
    Those things which elemented it.
The affections of all those mundane lovers are mutable, but ours is heavenly and permanent. Etymology is Latin, sub-, below + luna, moon + suffixes to make the grammar work out.

---L.

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