other-worldly

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

1. Alternative form of otherworldly.
   • 1873, Walter H[oratio] Pater, “[Johann Joachim] Winckelmann”, in Studies in the History of the Renaissance, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 204:

     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.

   • 1917 May, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Invisible King”, in God the Invisible King, London; New York, N.Y.: Cassell and Company […], →OCLC, § 7 (Adjusting Life), page 144:

     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.

   • 1919 October, John Galsworthy, chapter VII, in Saint’s Progress, London: William Heinemann, published December 1919, →OCLC, part III, 1 §, page 285:

     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.

   • 1947 March, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool”, in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, London: Secker and Warburg, published 1950, →OCLC, page 50:

     [Leo] Tolstoy was not a saint, but he tried very hard to make himself into a saint, and the standards he applied to literature were other-worldly ones.

   • 2012, Andrew Martin, “Everywhere in Trains”, in Underground Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube, paperback edition, London: Profile Books, published 2013, →ISBN, page 160:

     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.

• “other-worldly, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.