alien

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“
The wrinkleless, too smooth skin of the alien was a darkish yellow.

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Definitions (35)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (9)

  1. adjective Owing political allegiance to another country or government; foreign: alien residents.
  2. adjective Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange. See Synonyms at foreign.
  3. adjective Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature: emotions alien to her temperament.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (16)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (7)

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Examples (50)

  • Every world has an alien, and every alien world has a flying saucer, and they move about with great speed. —  Peter Ward on mass extinctions
  • Non-sf readers tend to assume that it's all the same -- an alien is an alien, after all --while most sf fans know there's something essentially different going on. —  F ;SF; - vol 091 issue 04-05 - October-November 1996
  • When he finally stood, the Mule's thin arms were as long as his legs; Ries saw the bones clearly through the skin as if the alien were a walking anatomy demonstration. —  EBSCOhost
  • A child ran past their bathing crater in the direction of the community caverns Do you think the alien might be a child? —  InterzoneScienceFictionandFantasyMagazine#214
  • He wondered if the alien was a manifestation of millions of people believing in her. —  AnalogSFF,April2008
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

new ·  human ·  strange ·  powerful ·  unknown

Used in the same contextWord Family

alien:   aliens
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old French, from Latin aliēnus, from alius, other; see al-1 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also aliene, alient, aliant, alliant, from Middle English alien, alyen, alyene, aliente, aliaunt, etc., from Old French alien, allien, from Latin alienus, belonging to another, from alius, another, akin to English else.
  2. from Middle English alienen, alyenen, from Old French aliener, modern F. aliéner = Provencal Spanish Portuguese alienar = Italian alienare, from Latin alienare, make alien, estrange, from alienus, alien: see alien, adjective
 

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/ˈeɪlyɛn/
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