# world

Pronunciation: say "WURLD" US /wɜɹld/, UK /wɜːld/

## Noun

1. The Earth considered as a physical planet and as the shared home of all its peoples and nations.
   - Simple: Our planet Earth, with all its people, countries, and cultures.
   - _Leaders from around the world gathered to discuss the climate crisis._
   - _Old maps reveal how little of the world had been explored a few centuries ago._
2. Collective human existence and the shared reality that people live in.
   - Simple: Everyday life and shared reality as all people experience it together.
   - _After school ends, students have to learn how things actually work in the real world._
   - _After ten years in prison, he struggled to find his place in the world._
3. The particular social setting, surroundings, or point of view belonging to a person or group.
   - Simple: The people, places, and way of life that surround a person or group.
   - _He always felt like an outsider in the rarefied world of academic publishing._
   - _The fashion world quickly embraced her unconventional designs._
4. The majority of people; people in general.
   - Simple: Most people, or nearly everyone.
   - _The world had already made up its mind about the scandal._
   - _He resigned quietly and let the world draw its own conclusions._
5. Life and reality as a single individual experiences it.
   - Simple: One person's own life, feelings, and reality.
   - _After the diagnosis, his world shrank to the walls of a hospital room._
   - _She drifted through her own private world, barely noticing anyone around her._
6. A region, or a set of nations or peoples, united by a common culture, language, history, or stage of development, as in the Arab world.
   - Simple: A part of the Earth, or a group of countries or peoples, that share a culture, language, history or level of wealth.
   - _The festival draws artists from all over the Arab world._
   - _Coffee spread quickly through the Islamic and then the Western worlds._
7. An imagined realm, such as an invented planet or an alternative version of the Earth, with its own societies, history, and rules, as in fiction or games.
   - Simple: An imaginary place, like a planet or a different version of Earth, invented for a story or game.
   - _The studio built a richly detailed world complete with its own myths and politics._
   - _Science fiction writers love inventing worlds whose societies mirror our own._
8. The whole of existence regarded as the universe.
   - Simple: Everything that exists, taken as the entire universe.
   - _Stoic philosophers viewed the world as a single rational whole governed by natural law._
   - _Medieval scholars placed the Earth at the center of the world._
10. A planet or other astronomical body, such as a moon, especially one that is or could be inhabited.
   - Simple: A planet or moon, especially one where living things could live.
   - _Each habitable world must orbit at the right distance from its star._
   - _The new telescope has detected several rocky worlds around nearby stars._
11. In a video game, a major section made up of a series of stages or levels that usually share a similar environment or theme.
   - Simple: In a video game, a group of levels that share the same setting or theme.
   - _The ice world introduces slippery platforms and a new set of enemies._
   - _The game's final world ties together themes from every earlier stage._
12. A great amount; a large quantity of something. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A very large amount of something.
   - _The new manager made a world of difference to staff morale._
   - _A long letter from an old friend did him a world of good._
9. A period of history, together with its people and way of life, thought of as a distinct age.
   - Simple: A time in history, with its people and way of life, thought of as a separate age.
   - _The customs of that vanished world seem strange to us now._
   - _Her lectures on the ancient world compare Greek and Roman ideas of law._
13. In mythology and cosmology, one of several separate realms, each with distinct features and inhabited by different kinds of beings.
   - Simple: One of several separate realms in a myth or religion, each with its own features and kinds of beings.
   - _Shamans were believed to travel between the upper and lower worlds in a trance._
   - _Each world in the cosmology was reserved for a particular kind of being._
14. A vast expanse of land or open countryside.
   - Simple: A huge stretch of land or open space.
   - _Beyond the pass lay a world of untouched wilderness stretching to the horizon._
   - _The wagons rolled for weeks across a world of grass with hardly a tree in sight._
15. Everyday life on earth, with its practical cares and pleasures, set apart from the life of the spirit or religion and from heaven or the hereafter.
   - Simple: Everyday life on earth, with its needs and pleasures, not religious life or life after death.
   - _After twenty years in banking, he renounced the world and entered a monastery._
   - _The sermon urged believers to set their hearts on heaven rather than on the world._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To consider something as a global whole, rather than focusing on national or other distinctions.
- (noun) In an operating system, the collection of programs distributed alongside the kernel, including the shell and other utilities.
- (noun) The highest trump in a tarot deck, numbered XXI, usually placed last among the twenty-two major arcana cards.
- (verb) To make something real, or to give worldly form to it; to bring it into actual existence.

## Origin

"World" comes from Middle English "world," from Old English "weorold," which goes back to Proto-Germanic *weraldiz meaning "lifetime, human existence," literally "age of man." It combines "wer" (man) and "eld" (age), and is related to Dutch "wereld," German "Welt," and Swedish "värld."

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