real world

[ ree-uhl, reel ]

noun

1. the realm of practical or actual experience, as opposed to the abstract, theoretical, or idealized sphere of the classroom, laboratory, etc.:

   recent college graduates looking for jobs in the real world of rising unemployment.

Other Words From

• real-world adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of real world¹

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

These episodes exposed the many new complications created by the NBA’s decision to return to the real world.

From Washington Post

I’m not a very “online” person, so someone who wants to do lots of stuff in the real world.

From Washington Blade

Maybe we’ll finally find a way to figure out what actually happens to the head during a crash so we can design helmets for the real world, not the lab.

From Outside Online

Swapping mirrors to the different rooms of the dollhouse would open new portals in the real world.

From Washington Post

Family parties weren't a feature of our pre-pandemic life, and these family members rarely, if ever, saw one another in the real world, except at weddings and funerals.

From Washington Post

Bratton might have said something that was closer to a real-world moral equivalence.

From The Daily Beast

And, of course, it recommends keeping screen time limited, so as not to supplant other, real-world play and exploration.

From The Daily Beast

In the real world, he said, a hacker is more likely interested in stealing records he can sell than in harming a patient.

From The Daily Beast

When MTV first started airing The Real World, it was meant to expose the brutal truth about human nature.

From The Daily Beast

Ed is a virgin with about as much real world experience as his pupils.

From The Daily Beast

What children they were with their simple unmorality of artists, as ignorant of the real world as babes in a wood!

From Project Gutenberg

I love to lock my door upon the real world, and unbar the portals of my fairy palace—my thought-realm.

From Project Gutenberg

But the world, Auberon, the real world, is not run on these hobbies.

From Project Gutenberg

The real world lay between the covers of the Green and Gold Book—the real world and its people.

From Project Gutenberg

I found it comforting somehow, a reminder that there was a real world out there somewhere, beyond the walls.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• here and now