Third World

American  

noun

(sometimes lowercase)

1. the underdeveloped nations of the world, especially those with widespread poverty.

2. 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.

3. the minority groups within a nation or predominant culture.

---

Third World British  

noun

1. Also called: developing world.  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

---

Third World Cultural  

1. 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.

---

third world Idioms  

1. 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.

---

Compare meaning

How does third-world compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• First World vs. Third World

Example Sentences

In fact, on a midnight shift in Cheyenne Mountain, I even read Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising,” which envisioned the Cold War gone hot, a Third World War gone nuclear.

From Salon • Dec. 7, 2025

Mr. Easterly is not a friend of rich-world technocrats or top-down dispensers of aid and omniscience who frequently fail to consult the very people—the Third World poor—for whose salvation they get paid handsomely.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 7, 2025

“You guys have put us into a Third World situation,” Scott Dittrich, a resident of Malibu, said at a Sept. 30 meeting that the city had with Edison to address the shutoffs.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 6, 2025

Rodriquez broadly charts it in three big word-and-image pieces generically titled “BX Third World Liberation Mixtape.”

From New York Times • Apr. 5, 2023

“To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context.”

From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie