Third World

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

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

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.

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

He’s a man of the Marxist Third World left who came of age when Africa went through its messy, often violent, years of decolonization.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Amon, Verde and DJ JG were playing a gig in Sacramento, where they shot a video clip for their hard-hitting Spanglish-language tune “Third World Problems” in front of the state Capitol.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

“Civilized people in America don’t eat like this,” he wrote on X. “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.”

Read more on Salon

Its residents’ lifespans are comparable to people in developing or “Third World” countries.

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He vowed especially to crack down on sanctuary cities across the country to supposedly “reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times