# alien

Pronunciation: say "AY-lee-uhn" /ˈeɪ.li.ən/

## Noun

1. A living being that comes from another planet or another dimension.
   - Simple: A living thing from another planet or another world.
   - _The film imagines an alien arriving from a distant galaxy._
   - _Witnesses claimed an alien stepped out of the glowing craft._
4. A person who is a citizen or national of another country; sometimes used with contempt for foreigners seen as untrustworthy.
   - Simple: A person from another country. Sometimes used as an insult for foreigners who are not trusted.
   - _Resident aliens must report their income to the tax authorities._
   - _The new law changed how an alien can apply for permanent residence._
6. A person, animal, plant, or other thing that comes from outside the family, group, organization, or territory in question.
   - Simple: A living thing or person that comes from outside a group, place, or family.
   - _Ecologists track how an alien spreads once it escapes into local waterways._
   - _In the close-knit firm, outside hires were quietly treated as aliens._
7. A person excluded from certain privileges, or one who has become estranged from others.
   - Simple: A person who is left out and feels cut off from a group.
   - _Stripped of his membership, he lived as an alien at the edge of the community._
   - _The reforms left longtime supporters feeling like aliens in the party they had built._

## Adjective

2. Relating to extraterrestrial life, or typical of a creature from another planet.
   - Simple: Coming from another planet, or like something from another planet.
   - _The probe returned images of an alien landscape unlike anything on Earth._
   - _Fans argued about whether the creature's biology was genuinely alien._
3. Completely unfamiliar, strange, or far removed from one's own experience.
   - Simple: Very strange and not at all familiar.
   - _The idea of living alone was completely alien to someone raised in a crowded household._
   - _After a decade abroad, his old neighborhood felt strangely alien._
5. Belonging to another country or government rather than one's own; foreign.
   - Simple: Belonging to another country, not your own.
   - _The treaty restricted alien ownership of farmland near the border._
   - _Voters worried about alien influence in their national elections._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To make someone feel estranged or no longer connected; to alienate.
- (verb) To transfer the ownership of property or a right to another party.

## Origin

This word came into Middle English from Old French alien, which came from Latin aliēnus ("belonging to someone else," and later "exotic, foreign"). That in turn came from Latin alius ("other"), and it is related to the English word else.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/alien (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).