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Third World
noun
- the underdeveloped nations of the world, especially those with widespread poverty.
- the group of developing nations, especially of Asia and Africa, that do not align themselves with the policies of either the U.S. or the former Soviet Union.
- the minority groups within a nation or predominant culture.
Third World
noun
- the less economically advanced countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America collectively, esp when viewed as underdeveloped and as neutral in the East-West alignment Also calleddeveloping world
Third World
- The nonaligned nations — which are often developing nations — of Africa , Asia , and Latin America . They are in a “third” group of nations because they were allied neither with the United States nor with the former Soviet Union .
Idioms and Phrases
Underdeveloped or developing countries, as in The conditions in our poorest rural areas resemble those in the third world . This expression originated in the mid-1900s, at first denoting those countries in Asia and Africa that were not aligned with either the Communist bloc nations or the non-Communist Western nations. Because they were for the most part poor and underdeveloped, the term was transferred to all countries with those characteristics, and later still to poorer groups within a larger prevailing culture.Example Sentences
Brazil is transforming itself, from third-world to first-world.
Now, the infrastructure is “world-class—not third-world,” Nhlumayo said.
These two states represent a third-world option designed to woo developing nations to Iran's side.
It also helped that Angelina had recently adopted a child from a third-world country.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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