The term “third world” does not mean something like “third rate.” The first world is the Western bloc, under the influence of the USA. The second world is the Eastern bloc, under the influence of the USSR. The third world is everyone else.
No, this is no longer what these terms mean in common parlance.
(There is no arbiter of language; words are imbued with meaning through usage. People use "first world" and "third world" quite differently now than during the Cold War.)
These words are no longer used in common parlance at all.
Now people use "developing nation" and "developed nation," and "second world" never evolved to mean "somewhere less poor than dirt-floor huts but less rich than London". About once a year I see someone make that mistake; it's not common, just a mistake.
But agreed, there's no arbiter of language for English, and we all understood the original poster, which is really the important part.
> These words are no longer used in common parlance at all.
> it's not common, just a mistake.
What's the difference between "common use" and "mistaken use" exactly? I've heard phrases like "third-world [pejorative]" thrown around here and there over the years. Is that a mistake or a change in common use over time?
First/second/third world stopped being used by academics and journalists, oh gosh, maybe a decade or two ago? After the fall of the Soviet union, but I don't remember how long after. Developed/developing nation replaced them.
As someone else pointed out, "second world" always referred to the Eastern Bloc countries (the soviet states and those allied with them). It never meant "somewhere in between first and third world, in terms of quality of life". That's the mistake.
The language shift was from first/second/third world to developed/developing nation, the mistake is using second world to mean something other than an eastern bloc country; you'd probably be understood, but that meaning was not ever in widespread use.
Literally once every 4 or 5 years I've heard a layman say "second world" referring to "poorer than America, richer than Ethiopia"; the lay usage is probably still first/third world, but people are slowly cottoning onto developed/developing nation.
I think even in common use, that use of "second world" is still "wrong," as far as anything in English can be wrong. Ted Cruz referred to it as a "basketball ring" and we all had a laugh, but we also all understood what he was talking about; is that wrong?
I'm mostly reluctant to tell anyone that their use of English is wrong, because it's such a fluid and ever-changing language; but when something like "second world" comes up and not in reference to the Soviet countries, it still jumps out at me as "well, that's not how people always used to use that phrase"...
It was invented in the 50s in france and literally is translated to 1/3rd world (tiers monde.) third (as in third place) would translate to troisieme. Poor translation basically.
That ship sailed long ago. Like the use of ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’, words mean what they are frequently used to mean. Fighting it is futile.
As it’s used, “I could care less” works as a sarcastic statement much better than “I couldn’t care less” as a literal one. Generally it’s possible for me to care less about some minute difference, but in absolute terms I don’t care enough for it to matter.
<comment reiterating that word usage changes and being a stickler for "right" definitions is a waste of time>
just because you think a term should be used one way or another doesn't mean your opinion is at all valuable. it's more useful to go with the wave of society rather than trying to imbue change on an obscure web forum.
Still valuable to point out that a number of people will not understand the sentence in the way the person intends it to be understood. In this case it's clear from context, but sometimes not so much.
I think developed and developing is also strange. It implies an universal direction countries have to follow where reality is way more complex. We should instead stop trying to simplify countries and segregating them into categories.
Developed and developing are also terms that are arbitrary. Human Development Indices of some countries that are considered developing today exceed those of developed countries when these terms were first used.
In common use it implies a strict hierarchy in rather simplistic terms.
Should not stagnant/stagnating also be added to that list? And also a negative term (staganation is neutral)? Not every undeveloped country is developing.
As someone who grew up in a third world country, I actually think it's a very apt descriptor of certain patterns and problems that continually occur across seemingly unrelated cultures.
I think we should stop using these terms.