How to Use terrestrial in a Sentence

terrestrial

adjective
  • The toad has terrestrial habits, spending most of its time on shore.
  • That rivals the size of even the largest terrestrial aquifers.
    — Michael J. Coren, Quartz, 22 June 2019
  • How did any of the terrestrial planets form?
    — Adam Kovac, Scientific American, 12 May 2026
  • Fall is terrestrial time on spring creeks, and the bugs are most active on warm, sunny days.
    — Popular Science, 26 Oct. 2020
  • Tracking these new aphids might just be the key to terrestrial success.
    — Liliana Webb, Detroit Free Press, 1 June 2022
  • Spielberg is a terrestrial, through and through, nowhere more so than in his fantasies.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 15 July 2024
  • And that’s true of rivers and fisheries, terrestrial wildlife, aquatic wildlife and birds.
    — Christine Peterson, Outdoor Life, 21 Aug. 2025
  • The new study comes at a time of reckoning for terrestrial wind power.
    — Eli Kintisch, Science | AAAS, 9 Oct. 2017
  • These marine plants form the base of the marine ecosystem, just as terrestrial plants do on land.
    — Erik Kobayashi-Solomon, Forbes, 18 Mar. 2022
  • The terms in which an awabi dreams are not for terrestrial primates to understand.
    — Literary Hub, 23 Feb. 2026
  • But specialists in terrestrial flies are on the case and have come up with some great-looking bugs this year.
    — Morgan Lyle, Field & Stream, 1 Mar. 2021
  • Noah’s spacecraft does not need to carry samples of all forms of terrestrial life.
    — Avi Loeb, Scientific American, 29 Nov. 2020
  • That is, the solar storm made the terrestrial storm a bit more dangerous.
    — Brian Resnick, Vox, 8 Aug. 2018
  • In any terrestrial ecosystem, a fresh pile of poop is an entire universe.
    — Christie Taylor, Popular Science, 13 Mar. 2024
  • Young tiger sharks who had their stomachs pumped were found to prefer terrestrial songbirds to seabirds.
    — Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's magazine, 22 July 2019
  • In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast.
    — Angela Fritz, Washington Post, 29 June 2017
  • But sea beans are a type of halophyte, a salt-loving terrestrial plant that can’t grow in pure fresh water.
    — Caroline Hatchett, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Mar. 2021
  • Forests, the largest terrestrial carbon sinks in the world, are part of the solution.
    — Ryan Gellert, Time, 9 Sep. 2025
  • There are some that are terrestrial, or rocky, that are Earth-sized and orbiting sun-like stars.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 10 Dec. 2019
  • These terrestrial planets, like Earth or Venus, are close enough to the star to be warmed by it.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 6 Aug. 2021
  • The boreal forest is the largest terrestrial biome in the world.
    — Emily Schwing, Scientific American, 14 Dec. 2021
  • Many bromeliads are terrestrial epiphytes that do great in the ground, or in pots sunk into garden beds.
    — Nan Sterman, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 May 2022
  • Why would a large terrestrial ungulate with long legs abandon its hooves in favor of claws?
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 18 Jan. 2026
  • The systems are of course built to resist rust, but so are terrestrial panels, which are exposed to rain.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 13 Mar. 2023
  • The switch from terrestrial to satellite service should be seamless for the user.
    — Wes Siler, Outside Online, 26 Aug. 2022
  • Even there, a million miles away from Earth, the telescope may still be weighed down by its terrestrial baggage.
    — Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 25 Oct. 2021
  • Just 4% are terrestrial, or rocky planets like Earth or Mars.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 21 Mar. 2022
  • Woody growth allows these plants to keep growing, year after year, making woody plants the largest and tallest terrestrial plants.
    — Tim MacWelch, Outdoor Life, 19 Mar. 2021
  • The message is sent from the ground station out to terrestrial or cell phone networks and completed that way.
    — Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY, 29 Sep. 2017
  • Long-lived, terrestrial and found in more than a dozen states, the ornate is one of two species of box turtles in Illinois.
    — Morgan Greene, chicagotribune.com, 7 May 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'terrestrial.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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