worldling

From world +‎ -ling.

worldling (plural worldlings)

1. A mundane person, preoccupied with worldly affairs rather than spiritual matters.
   • c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii]:

     A foutra for the world and worldlings base!

   • 1600, Nicholas Breton, “A Solemn Farewell to the World”, in Melancholike Humours, in Verses of Diverse Natures:

     These wicked wares, that worldlings buy and sell,
     The moth will eat, or else the canker rust:
     All flesh is grass, and to the grave it must.

   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 21, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     […] if the simple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlings regard it! Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money.

   • 1888, The Lady's Book - Volumes 6-7, page 243:

     Disgusted with the world and worldlings, I drove down to an estate of my father's, in Suffolk, determined to “misanthropise” and be romantic ; but all my plans were disconcerted by the “Large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands” of Miss Emily Hathenden, whose estate bordered on my own.

   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 167:

     His seeming rescue by a votaress of the high priestess of the sun had been but a part of the mimicry of their heathen ceremony—the sun looking down upon him through the opening at the top of the court had claimed him as his own, and the priestess had come from the inner temple to save him from the polluting hands of worldlings—to save him as a human offering to their flaming deity.

• “worldling” in Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary: Based on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 7th edition, Springfield, Mass.: G[eorge] & C[harles] Merriam, 1963 (1967 printing), →OCLC.