around-the-world

The term is a modern English compound, directly formed from the common prepositional phrase "around the world". The phrase itself has Old English roots: "around" derives from the Old English phrase 'on rūne', meaning 'in a circle', combined with the Old English 'þæm worulde', the dative form of 'world', meaning 'human existence' or 'the earth'. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the advent of technologies enabling global travel, the hyphenated form "around-the-world" became lexicalized as a single adjectival unit. It encapsulates the concept of circumnavigation, shifting from a literal descriptive phrase to a fixed modifier for journeys, races, or broadcasts that encompass the entire planet.

This is a fixed compound adjective formed from the prepositional phrase "around the world". It is not segmentable into productive morphemes in the context of its modern, lexicalized meaning.