Alternative forms

• vurld (Bermuda)

Etymology

From Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#WORLDCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#WORLD world, from Old EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Old English#WORLDCategory:English terms derived from Old English#WORLD weorold (“world”), from Proto-West GermanicCategory:English terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic#WORLDCategory:English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic#WORLD *weraldi, from Proto-GermanicCategory:English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic#WORLDCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Germanic#WORLD *weraldiz (“lifetime, human existence, world”, literally “age/era of man”), equivalent to wer (“man”) +‎ eld (“age”). Eclipsed non-native Middle English mounde (“world”), from Old French monde, munde (“world”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: wûrld
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /wɜːld/Category:English 1-syllable words#WORLDCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#WORLD
  • (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /wɜɹld/, [wɝɘɫd]Category:English 1-syllable words#WORLDCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#WORLD

    • Audio (General American):

      (file)

      Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#WORLD

    • Audio (Canada):

      (file)

      Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#WORLD
  • (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /wɵːld/, [wɵːɯ̯d̥]Category:English 1-syllable words#WORLDCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#WORLD
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ldCategory:Rhymes:English/ɜː(ɹ)ld#WORLDCategory:Rhymes:English/ɜː(ɹ)ld/1 syllable#WORLD
• Homophones: whirled (with both the wine–whine merger and fern–fir–fur merger); whorled (with both mergers, Received Pronunciation only)Category:English terms with homophones#WORLD

Noun

English Wikipedia has an article on:

world

Wikipedia

world (plural worlds)Category:English lemmas#WORLDCategory:English nouns#WORLDCategory:English countable nouns#WORLDCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#WORLDCategory:Pages with entries#WORLDCategory:Pages with 3 entries#WORLD

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

   Synonym: (proper noun with alternative capitalization) World

   In retrospect, the process of economic globalization has meant the end of the world as we knew it.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

   There will always be lovers, till the world’s end.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

   • 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest:

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

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

   • 1931, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World:

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

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

   • 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:

     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”?.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

2. (with "the" or a singular possessive pronoun) The subjective human experience, regarded individually.

   The period immediately following my divorce seemed like the end of my world.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

   He was my world! [said of a slain companion]Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

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

     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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

     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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

     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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

3. (metonymicCategory:English metonyms#WORLD, with "the") A 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.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

5. The Universe.
6. (with "the") The Earth, especially in a geopolitical or cultural context, or as the physical planet.

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

   People are dying of starvation all over the world.Category:English terms with usage examples#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.

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

     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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

     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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

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

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
   • 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:

     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”?.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

7. (with "a") 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?Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

8. (countableCategory:English countable nouns#WORLD) (Several) alternative scenarios concerning The Earth, either as the physical planet, or in a geopolitical, cultural or societal context.
   • 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):

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

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

9. (countableCategory:English countable nouns#WORLD) A planet, especially one which is inhabited or inhabitable.

   Our mission is to travel the galaxy and find new worlds.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

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

     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?’

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

     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?”

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

   • 1970, Larry Niven, Ringworld, page 118:

     Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain.

     Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

     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.

   1. (by extension) Any other astronomical body which may be inhabitable, such as a natural satellite.
10. A very large extent of country.

    the New WorldCategory:English terms with collocations#WORLD

11. In various mythologies, cosmologies, etc., one of a number of separate realms or regions having different characteristics and occupied by different types of inhabitants.
    • 2017, Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 182:

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

      Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

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

    the world of NarniaCategory:English terms with collocations#WORLD

    the Wizarding World of Harry PotterCategory:English terms with collocations#WORLD

    a zombie worldCategory:English terms with collocations#WORLD

13. An individual or group perspective or social setting.

    Synonym: circle

    In the world of boxing, good diet is all-important.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

    Welcome to my world.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

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

      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.

      Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD

14. (computingCategory:en:Computing#WORLD) The part of an operating system distributed with the kernel, consisting of the shell and other programs.
15. (video gamesCategory:en:Video games#WORLD) A 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?Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

    There's a hidden warp to the next world down this pipe.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

16. (tarotCategory:en:Cartomancy#WORLD) The twenty-second trump or major arcana card of the tarot.
17. (informalCategory:English informal terms#WORLD) A great amount, a lot.

    Taking a break from work seems to have done her a world of good.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

    You're going to be in a world of trouble when your family finds out.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

    That new wallpaper has made worlds of difference downstairs.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

    This movie isn't even billed as a comedy, but it's worlds funnier than the comedy I saw last month.Category:English terms with usage examples#WORLD

    to think the world of someoneCategory:English terms with collocations#WORLD

    to mean the world to someoneCategory:English terms with collocations#WORLD

18. (archaicCategory:English terms with archaic senses#WORLD) Age, era.
    • 1610, The Second Tome of the Holie Bible, […] (Douay–Rheims Bible), Doway: Laurence Kellam, […], →OCLC, Psalmes 144:13, page 257:

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

      Category:English terms with quotations#WORLD