What is the world? Explanatory dictionaries provide several meanings. According to one of them, the world is the Universe. There are other meanings. Many of them have long gone out of speech. What is the meaning of this concept? What antonym to the word "world" can be chosen?
Examples from the literature
This noun is found in works of art and journalism in different meanings. "The world can be changed with love." In this statement, which belongs to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, this word has the same meaning as in the wise phrase of Dostoevsky, which became a winged word. The Russian writer (or his famous character), as you know, was convinced that beauty would save the world. Here, this concept is equivalent to the word "society." What antonym to the word "world" should be used in this case? The opposite in meaning of the term does not exist.
"War and society"
Antonym to the word "peace", which comes to mind in the first place, is "war." But the name of the great Tolstoy epic novel does not contain a concept that is opposite in meaning. By the word "peace" the writer meant "Russian society."
Before the spelling reform, which took place in 1917, in the Russian language there were homophones "peace" and the word in which the letter "i" was used when writing. That is, lexical units that sounded the same, but one of them meant "no war", the other was a synonym for the noun "society". As a result of the reform, the letter “i” disappeared from the Russian alphabet. The meanings of two lexical units were combined into one word.
In Russian, the word "peace" means friendship, peace, the absence of war. And also the universe, light, all living things. In other languages, these categories of concepts are called completely different sound words.
There are many examples of the use of this noun in fiction and scientific literature. But it is not always possible to choose the antonym for the word “world”. The modern prose writer Ivanov A.V., for example, once said that for lovers the world around is just scenery. Here, the writer did not mean the Universe and all living things as a social environment. It is antonym to the word “world”, which has just such a meaning, cannot be selected. What other meanings does this concept have?
Universe
What the world was, the ancients thought. This topic is dedicated by modern scientists. In philosophical terminology, the word "world" means "existence", "human being." Opposing concepts do not exist.
The ancient Greeks believed that the world arose from chaos. And people, and gods, and demigods, and numerous creatures in which they believed, also arose from it. That is, before the appearance of everything earthly and divine, there was only chaos. According to ancient Greek mythology, this word can serve as an antonym to the noun "world". But only if chaos is understood as the primary state of the Universe, but not mess and confusion.
Society
Antonym to the word "world" - the phrase "monastic life." For a noun, the meaning of which is considered in this article, a synonym is not only “society”, but also “secular society”. These concepts are not equivalent. The term “peace” is contrasted with the phrase “monastic solitude”. Examples:
- In the world, people are in daily cares and troubles, while monastic solitude allows you to achieve spiritual harmony.
- She lived in the monastery for many years and hardly remembered who she was in the world.
This concept was also used earlier to define the peasant community.
Gang words
Adjectives formed from a noun, the meanings of which are considered in this article: peaceful, meek, worldly, worldly, universal. The meanings, and, consequently, the antonyms, are different. Examples:
- peaceful - hostile;
- meek - restless;
- worldly - monastic.
Other antonyms
Peace is the absence of hostilities. Here are a few examples in which there are both synonyms and concepts that are opposite to it in meaning:
- After a four-year war , at that time, when nature and all living things flourish, peaceful life began.
- In this country, the struggle for independence has been going on for so long that the inhabitants have already forgotten what peacetime is.
In some texts, this can be replaced by the phrase “peace treaty”. In such cases, the nouns “quarrel”, “war”, “contradiction” can serve as antonyms. Examples:
- Constant family quarrels almost brought to a divorce, but in order to comply with material interests, the spouses concluded a peace treaty.
- This war was the longest in history, because a peace treaty was concluded thirty years after its declaration.
What else can I choose an anonym? The world is the absence of contradictions, struggles. This means that the opposite words in meaning are hostility, clash, conflict, disagreement. Examples:
- There will never be peace in a house while disagreement, quarrels and insults reign in it.
- The mutual understanding between them was fragile, because any hostile clash could lead to a new war.
- According to popular wisdom, a good quarrel is worse than a bad world.