Sometimes we say “the Earth” while just “Earth”.
Why does it so?
Hello Phoo
“Earth” is an entity; “the earth/the Earth” is a planet.
So you’re more likely to find “Earth” in poetic or more rhetorical contexts, e.g. as in Wordsworth’s sonnet “Westminster Bridge”:
- Earth has not anything to show more fair.
Whereas “the Earth” is more likely to occur in scientific or factual contexts, e.g.
- It takes 365.256 days for the Earth to travel around the Sun.
However, this is not a rule; only a tendency!
All the best,
MrP
Hi, Mr. Pedantic
So, you described a tendency according to which we have to use “the earth” in scientific/factual contexts. Do you think this sentence is grammatical and natural (I suppose, it is a factual context, since we’re talking about life, not about something poetic in this case):
After visiting several galaxies, the aliens found themselves captivated by life on the earth ?
Thanks !
That’s a good example. Both seem to work there: for me, the version with “the” suggests that the sentence is written from the alien point of view, while a version without “the” would suggest a human viewpoint.
(This may be because – contrary to the tendency I mentioned – “life on earth” is a set phrase; inserting the article makes it seem more detached.)
Best wishes,
MrP
To MrPedantic, and all who live on Earth,
I believe that there is no proper context for calling our planet “The Earth”.
You claim: “Earth” is an entity; “the earth/the Earth” is a planet."
I disagree. “Earth” is the name of our planet. You’ve never in your life heard anyone refer to “The Mars”. “I’m going to the Mars. Do you want anything?” Sounds like a grocery store or a strip club.
You also say: …the version with “the” suggests that the sentence is written from the alien point of view, while a version without “the” would suggest a human viewpoint.
I think we would be considered aliens on Mars, yet we refer to it only as Mars. To get personal, my name is Max. I’ve never been called The Max. I have however, on occasion, taken it to the max. But that’s different.
Also, calling it Earth in scientific context works just as well: It takes 365.256 days for the Earth to travel around the Sun. Oh shit. I called the Sun THE Sun! How can I make that work with my theory? I can’t drop the the from the Sun. I don’t want to wake up and say " Oh look, Sun came up again.", or “Damn it! I just looked directly into Sun and now I have a purple spot on my vision!”. Maybe referring to the Sun with that nice the on there makes it seem singular. People do often refer to stars as suns though. Sun is the name of our star and it can be a generic name for any star. “The galaxy is composed of 400 billions suns.” If we use the Egyptian sun-god Ra’s name, “the” becomes immediately inappropriate. Though Ra is just a name, like Sun is a name for the Sun. I agree that the adding of “the” to our planet’s name suggests a detachment. I dislike this greatly as we could be no less attached to Earth. I don’t mind calling the Sun the Sun because it is our one sun. It is THE Sun. Earth however, is part of us, and we are part of it. We are not detachable from it (at least not without taking some of it with us), and we shouldn’t think of ourselves as separate from it. While we are dependent on the Sun for sustaining most life, I’d personally like to keep at least a few light minutes between us. I am ok with these physical and linguistic detachments from our Sun. The same does not apply to Earth and I urge you all to refer to our wonderful cosmic home simply that. Earth. Or Mother Earth I guess… if you want to get all matriarchal on us.
Always remember that the stars are always there. Above you, below you, in front of you and behind you, on all sides. At Night the sun is below your feet heating the planet from beneath you and radiating on all those who you can’t see. Behind every grain of rice lies 10,000 galaxies. There are more dimensions than you could ever imagine. All reality is is signals in your brain, you imagine the entire universe. No light ever reaches your brain, only signals. If you imagine it, it is real. Religion is evil. Hate is ignorance. Nature is God. Look for good and you will manifest it. Be good to one another.
PEACE
One of my pet peeves is when people say ‘the’ Earth when referring to the planet on which we live. We don’t say ‘the’ Saturn or ‘the’ Mars. We say the sun and the moon because they don’t have names and there are many suns and many moons in the universe. There is only one planet named Earth. In my opinion we must always say ‘Earth’ when referring to our planet. The only time that ‘the’ is used is when we refer to soil/dirt or the ground we walk on.
Examples without ‘the’:
We live on Earth. Earth is larger than Pluto. Jupiter is larger than Earth. We use enough plastic bottles to wrap them around Earth 3 million times (or whatever).
Earth is round. The meteor is heading towards Earth. Also, We dug through five feet of earth (dirt/soil) before we hit water.
Examples with ‘the’"
As sure as the earth (ground) I stand on. Chemicals in the earth (soil) we use for farming is ruining our crops. In these two examples I would probably use ‘ground’ and ‘soil’ and not the word earth.
When in doubt leave it (‘the’) out! 