world

plural worlds · alternative vurld

1. with "the" or a plural possessive pronounThe subjective human experience, regarded collectively; human collective existence; existence in general; the reality we live in.

   There will always be lovers, till the world’s end.

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   In retrospect, the process of economic globalization has meant the end of the world as we knew it.

   O wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! / O brave new world, / That has such people in 't.

   1610–1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest

   (Huxley is quoting William Shakespeare's play The Tempest in this novel's title)

   1931, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

   So how do the scientists cope with their work being ignored for decades, and living in a world their findings indicate is on a “highway to hell”?.

   2024 May 8, Damian Carrington, “‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair. World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target”, in The Guardian, UK

   Synonyms: World

2. with "the" or a singular possessive pronounThe subjective human experience, regarded individually.

   He was my world! [said of a slain companion]

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   The period immediately following my divorce seemed like the end of my world.

   The world was awake to the 2nd of May, but Mayfair is not the world, and even the menials of Mayfair lie long abed. As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.

   1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./4/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days

   Eustace gaped at him in amazement. When his urbanity dropped away from him, as now, he had an innocence of expression which was almost infantile. It was as if the world had never touched him at all.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 9, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.

   2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 11

3. metonymicallywith definite articleA majority of people.

   Running after God is the only life worth living. Even though the world believes that living for God is boring, we believe that there is nothing more exciting.

4. The Universe.
5. with definite articleThe Earth, especially in a geopolitical or cultural context, or as the physical planet.

   People are dying of starvation all over the world.

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   “As the world turns, we know the bleakness of winter, the promise of spring, the fullness of summer and the harvest of autumn–the cycle of life is complete.” - quotation attributed to Irna Phillips.

   Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes.[…]She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her throat.

   1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close[…]above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them. Many insects probably use this strategy, which is a close analogy to crypsis in the visible world—camouflage and other methods for blending into one’s visual background.

   2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, pages 206–7

   She says the Third Pole is one of the world’s largest sources of fresh drinking water.

   2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns

   So how do the scientists cope with their work being ignored for decades, and living in a world their findings indicate is on a “highway to hell”?.

   2024 May 8, Damian Carrington, “‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair. World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target”, in The Guardian, UK

   Synonyms: the earth, Earth, the globe, God's green earth, Sol III, the planet

6. Any of several possible scenarios concerning The Earth, either as the physical planet, or in a geopolitical, cultural or societal context.

   Who would want to live in a world like this?

7. countable(Several) alternative scenarios concerning The Earth, either as the physical planet, or in a geopolitical, cultural or societal context.

   the best of all possible worlds. In the French original: le meilleur des mondes possibles. In German: die beste aller möglichen Welten.

   1710, Gottfried Leibniz, Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil)

8. countableA distinct realm, capable of containing objects or inhabitants, which does not physically border other similar realms.

   He's a highly advanced AI, and this is his world - one that he created from nothing. So, naturally, he has control over... everything. ...But so do we.

   2026 March 20, Gooseworx, “hjsakldfhl” (21:09 from the start), in The Amazing Digital Circus, episode 8, spoken by Kinger (Sean Chiplock)

   1. countableA planet, especially one which is inhabited or inhabitable.

      Our mission is to travel the galaxy and find new worlds.

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      A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour […] A time to sicken and to swoon, ⁠When Science reaches forth her arms ⁠To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon?’

      1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 35

      And They said to Kib: “What are these things that move upon The Earth yet move not in circles like the Worlds, that regard like the Moon and yet they do not shine?”

      1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC

      Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain.

      1970, Larry Niven, Ringworld, page 118

      I think many people think of asteroids as kind of little chips of rock. But the places that Dawn is going to really are more like worlds.

      2007 September 27, Marc Rayman (interviewee), “NASA's Ion-Drive Asteroid Hunter Lifts Off”, National Public Radio

   2. broadlycountableAny other astronomical body which may be inhabitable, such as a natural satellite.
   3. countableIn various mythologies, cosmologies, etc., one of a number of separate realms or regions having different characteristics and occupied by different types of inhabitants.

      Frey [...] clambered up on to the Hildskjalf, the throne from which Odin could see everything that happened across the nine worlds.

      2017, Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 182

   4. countableA fictional realm, such as a planet, containing one or multiple societies of beings, especially intelligent ones.

      a zombie world

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      the world of Narnia

      the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

9. A very large extent of country.

   the New World

10. An individual or group perspective or social setting.

    Welcome to my world.

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    In the world of boxing, good diet is all-important.

    According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.

    2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55

    Synonyms: circle

11. computingThe part of an operating system distributed with the kernel, consisting of the shell and other programs.
12. video gamesA subdivision of a game, consisting of a series of stages or levels that usually share a similar environment or theme.

    Have you reached the boss at the end of the ice world?

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    There's a hidden warp to the next world down this pipe.

13. human sciencesThe twenty-second trump or major arcana card of the tarot.
14. informalA great amount, a lot.

    to mean the world to someone

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    Taking a break from work seems to have done her a world of good.

    You're going to be in a world of trouble when your family finds out.

    That new wallpaper has made worlds of difference downstairs.

    This movie isn't even billed as a comedy, but it's worlds funnier than the comedy I saw last month.

    to think the world of someone

15. archaicAge, era.

    Thy kingdom is a kingdom of al worldes: and thy domnion in al generation and generation.

    1610, The Second Tome of the Holie Bible, […] (Douay–Rheims Bible), Doway: Laurence Kellam, […], →OCLC, Psalmes 144:13, page 257

present singular third person worlds · participle present worlding · participle past worlded · past worlded · alternative vurld

1. transitiveTo consider or cause to be considered from a global perspective; to consider as a global whole, rather than making or focusing on national or other distinctions; compare globalize.

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   There are by now many feminisms (Tong, 1989; Humm, 1992). [...] They are in shifting alliance or contest with postmodern critiques, which at times seem to threaten the very category 'women' and its possibilities for a feminist politics. These debates inform this attempt at worlding women—moving beyond white western power centres and their dominant knowledges (compare Spivak, 1985), while recognising that I, as a white settler-state woman, need to attend to differences between women, too.

   1996, Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A feminist international politics, page ix-x

   In a sense, the dictatorship was a failure of failure and, on that account, it was perhaps the exemplary system of control. Having in 1933 wagered on the worlding of the world in the regime's failure, Heidegger after the war can only rue his opportunistic hopes for an exposure of the ontological foundations of control.

   2005, James Phillips, Heidegger's Volk: Between National Socialism and Poetry, Stanford University Press, →ISBN

2. transitiveTo make real; to make worldly.

plural Worlds

1. The specific world, or any of several specific constituent worlds, that humans live in, among any other (real or possible) worlds:
   1. Earth: the Earth (our earth).
   2. The Universe: our universe.
   3. Existence.
   4. The Third World (the third world).
   5. The First World (the first world).
   6. The Second World (the second world).
   7. The Fourth World (the fourth world).
   8. The Industrialized World (the industrialized world).
   9. The Developed World (the developed world).
   10. The Developing World (the developing world).