worldview
Meaning
a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.
Structure
Usage
his scientific training gave him a materialist worldview.
the novel explores the clash between traditional and modern worldviews.
anthropologists study how a culture's worldview shapes its customs and values.
Etymology
The compound noun 'worldview' is a modern philosophical term, a calque of the German 'weltanschauung'. It combines the Old English-derived 'world', which originally meant 'age of man' and evolved to denote the totality of human experience and the physical universe, with 'view', from the Latin root for seeing. The literal construction "a view of the world" metaphorically extends the act of visual perception to the intellectual and cultural act of forming a comprehensive, often subconscious, framework of beliefs about reality. This conceptual blend illustrates how abstract thought is frequently built upon concrete sensory vocabulary, with 'view' providing the lens through which the complex entity 'world' is interpreted and understood.
Analysis
- world: from old english 'woruld' (human existence, the affairs of life), of germanic origin; functions as the object or domain being considered. - view: from anglo-norman 'veue', from old french 'veoir' (to see), from latin 'vidēre'; functions as the act or manner of perceiving or interpreting.