world
Other forms: worlds
The noun world usually refers to the earth, including both the planet itself and the organisms that live on it. If you say, "I want to get out and see the world," you want to go everywhere and see everything.
World can also mean someone's individual experiences — your world changed when you got a cat — or one particular region or group, like an actor famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world. While today you can use the words world and earth interchangeably, world originally meant just human experience; the Old English wer, or man, plus ald, or age, together formed weralt: the age of man.
Definitions of world
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the 3rd planet from the sun; the planet we live on“he sailed around the world”
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example of:
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terrestrial planet
a planet having a compact rocky surface like the Earth's; the four innermost planets in the solar system
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terrestrial planet
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everything that exists anywhere
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types:
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closed universe
(cosmology) a universe that is spatially closed and in which there is sufficient matter to halt the expansion that began with the big bang; the visible matter is only 10 percent of the matter required for closure but there may be large amounts of dark matter
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natural order
the physical universe considered as an orderly system subject to natural (not human or supernatural) laws
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environment, nature
(with 'the') the natural physical world including plants, animals, landscapes, etc.
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type of:
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natural object
an object occurring naturally; not made by man
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closed universe
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a part of the earth that can be considered separately
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the concerns of this life as distinguished from heaven and the afterlife“they consider the church to be independent of the world”
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synonyms:
earth, earthly concern, worldly concern
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type of:
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concern
something that interests you because it is important or affects you
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concern
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all of the living human inhabitants of the earth
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synonyms:
human beings, human race, humanity, humankind, humans, man, mankind
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people in general considered as a whole
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people in general; especially a distinctive group of people with some shared interest“the Western world”
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synonyms:
domain
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types:
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academe, academia
the academic world
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Grub Street
the world of literary hacks
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type of:
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class, social class, socio-economic class, stratum
people having the same social, economic, or educational status
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academe, academia
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all of your experiences that determine how things appear to you“his world was shattered”“we live in different worlds”
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synonyms:
reality
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types:
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real life, real world
the practical world as opposed to the academic world
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type of:
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experience
the content of direct observation or participation in an event
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real life, real world
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involving the entire earth; not limited or provincial in scope“a world crisis”
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synonyms:
global, planetary, world-wide, worldwide
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international
concerning or belonging to all or at least two or more nations
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international
Pronunciation
US
/wərld/
UK
/wəld/
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DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘world'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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