Etimology
From Middle English world, weoreld, from Old English weorold (“world”), from Proto-West Germanic *weraldi, from Proto-Germanic *weraldiz (“lifetime, human existence, world”, literally “age/era of man”), equivalent to wer (“man”) + eld (“age”). Cognate with Scots warld (“world”), Saterland Frisian Waareld (“world”), West Frisian wrâld (“world”), Afrikaans wêreld (“world”), Dutch wereld (“world”), Low German Werld (“world”), German Welt (“world”), Norwegian Bokmål verden (“(the) world”), Norwegian Nynorsk verd (“world”), Swedish värld (“world”), Icelandic veröld (“world”).
noun
world (countable and uncountable, plural worlds)
(with "the" or a plural possessive pronoun) The subjective human experience, regarded collectively; human collective existence; existence in general.
(with "the" or a singular possessive pronoun) The subjective human experience, regarded individually.
(metonymically, with "the") A majority of people.
The Universe.
(uncountable, with "the") The Earth, especially in a geopolitical or cultural context.
(countable) A planet, especially one which is inhabited or inhabitable.
A very large extent of country.
In various mythologies, cosmologies, etc., one of a number of separate realms or regions having different characteristics and occupied by different types of inhabitants.
A fictional realm, such as a planet, containing one or multiple societies of beings, especially intelligent ones.
An individual or group perspective or social setting.
(computing) The part of an operating system distributed with the kernel, consisting of the shell and other programs.
(video games) A subdivision of a game, consisting of a series of stages or levels that usually share a similar environment or theme.
(tarot) The twenty-second trump or major arcana card of the tarot.
(informal, singular or plural, followed by "of") A great amount.
(archaic) Age, era.
Examples
In retrospect, the process of economic globalization has meant the end of the world as we knew it.
There will always be lovers, till the world’s end.
Synonym: World
The period immediately following my divorce seemed like the end of my world.
He was my world! [said of a slain companion]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Synonyms: the earth, Earth, the globe, God's green earth, Sol III
People are dying of starvation all over the world.
“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.
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.
She says the Third Pole is one of the world’s largest sources of fresh drinking water.
Our mission is to travel the galaxy and find new worlds.
A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour […]A time to sicken and to swoon,When Science reaches forth her armsTo feel from world to world, and charmsHer secret from the latest moon?’
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?”
Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain.
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.
the New World
Frey [...] clambered up on to the Hildskjalf, the throne from which Odin could see everything that happened across the nine worlds.
the world of Narnia; the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; a zombie world
Synonym: circle
In the world of boxing, good diet is all-important.
Welcome to my world.
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.
Have you reached the boss at the end of the ice world?
There's a hidden warp to the next world down this pipe.
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.
Thy kingdom is a kingdom of al worldes: and thy domnion in al generation and generation.
Related words
hyponyms
First World
Fourth World
free world
Majority World
New World
Old World
Second World
Third World
umbworld
underworld
verb
world (third-person singular simple present worlds, present participle worlding, simple past and past participle worlded)
To consider or cause to be considered from a global perspective; to consider as a global whole, rather than making or focussing on national or other distinctions; compare globalise.
To make real; to make worldly.
Examples
There are by now many feminisms . [...] 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 , while recognising that I, as a white settler-state woman, need to attend to differences between women, too.
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.