Inferior and superior planets

In the Solar System, a planet is said to be inferior with respect to another planet if its orbit lies inside the other planet's orbit around the Sun. In this situation, the latter planet is said to be superior to the former. In the reference frame of the Earth, in which the terms were originally used, the inferior planets are Mercury and Venus, while the superior planets are Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Dwarf planets like Ceres or Pluto and most asteroids are 'superior' in the sense that they almost all orbit outside the orbit of Earth.

These terms were originally used in the geocentric cosmology of Claudius Ptolemy to differentiate as inferior those planets (Mercury and Venus) whose epicycle remained co-linear with the Earth and Sun, and as superior those planets (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) that did not.

In the 16th century, the terms were modified by Copernicus, who rejected Ptolemy's geocentric model, to distinguish a planet's orbit's size in relation to the Earth's.

When Earth is stated or assumed to be the reference point:

...
Wikipedia