world

Etymology

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 (“world”), Norwegian Nynorsk verd (“world”), Swedish värld (“world”), Icelandic veröld (“the world”).

noun

1. (with "the" or a plural possessive pronoun) The subjective human experience, regarded collectively; human collective existence; existence in general.
   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.
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.
   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. 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
   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. 2013-06-01, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 11
3. (metonymically, 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.
4. The Universe.
5. (uncountable, with "the") The Earth, especially in a geopolitical or cultural context.
   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.
   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. File:She says the Third Pole is one of the world’s largest sources of fresh drinking water.ogg 2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns
6. (countable) A planet, especially one which is inhabited or inhabitable.
   Our mission is to travel the galaxy and find new worlds.
   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
   1. (by extension) Any other astronomical body which may be inhabitable, such as a natural satellite.
7. A very large extent of country.
   the New World
8. (fiction) A realm, such as a planet, containing one or multiple societies of beings, especially intelligent ones.
   the world of Narnia; the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; a zombie world
9. An individual or group perspective or social setting.
   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. 2013-06-08, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55
10. (computing) The part of an operating system distributed with the kernel, consisting of the shell and other programs.
11. (video games) 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?
    There's a hidden warp to the next world down this pipe.
12. (tarot) The twenty-second trump or major arcana card of the tarot.
13. (informal, singular or plural, followed by "of") A great amount.
    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.
14. (archaic) Age, era.

verb

1. 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.
   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
2. To make real; to make worldly.