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In science-fiction stories, an earthling is a human — a person from Earth — named from the outside, as an alien or a narrator might name us. It sets Earth people apart from visitors from other worlds. The tone can be friendly, comic, or a little looking-down (“foolish earthlings”). You almost never need this word for real life; if someone says it off a screen, they are joking or quoting a story. Though actually, English once had a look-alike word for a farmer, “one of the earth”; that older sense died out. The earthling students meet now is the story word, built from earth + -ling, someone who belongs to Earth.
地球人（科幻裡對人類的叫法）
組成earth (the ground / this planet) + -ling (a person who belongs there). An older English word with the same pieces meant a farmer, but that sense died out; today’s word is the science-fiction one. People sometimes compare the idea with human, from a Latin word for soil — same picture, not the same English parts.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Earthlingnoun/ˈɜːθlɪŋ/
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An inhabitant of Earth, as opposed to one of heaven.
- VVe (of all earthlings) are Gods vtmoſt ſubiects, the laſt (in a manner) that he bought to his obedience: ſhal we then forgette that vvee are any ſubiects of hys, becauſe (as amongſt his Angels) he is not viſibly conuerſant amongſt vs?
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literaturemediapublishingAn inhabitant of Earth, as opposed to one of another planet; specifically, a sentient member of any species native to Earth.
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archaicA person who is materialistic or worldly; a worldling.
earthlingnoun詞源 1/ˈɜːθlɪŋ/
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One who tills the earth; a farmer, a husbandman, a ploughman.
- Eoꞃðlinᵹ [Eorthling], is a Husbandman, or Earthling.
- And we have not imagination enough to believe, that either the Danish boors, who were earthlings (yrthlingas) in the country, or the Danish soldiers, who, as history tells us, were dandies at the court of King Canute, could, in the brief space of twenty years, have so overlaid or interlarded the pure Anglo-Saxon with their provincialisms, as to give it a new character, and thus form a new period in its history, as was afterwards done by the Normans.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。