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OLD WORLD
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The regions of the world that were known to Europeans before the discovery of the Americas
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Instance hypernyms:
region (a large indefinite location on the surface of the Earth)
Holonyms ("Old World" is a part of...):
eastern hemisphere; orient (the hemisphere that includes Eurasia and Africa and Australia)
Context examples:
Old World leishmaniasis is separated into three distinct types according to epidemiology and clinical manifestations and is caused by species of the L. tropica and L. aethiopica complexes as well as by species of the L. major genus.
(Cutaneous Leishmaniasis, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)
So Amy sailed away to find the Old World, which is always new and beautiful to young eyes, while her father and friend watched her from the shore, fervently hoping that none but gentle fortunes would befall the happy-hearted girl, who waved her hand to them till they could see nothing but the summer sunshine dazzling on the sea.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The ceremony is performed in his majesty’s great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the new or old world.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and harpy-women, seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this new world and expanded.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:—'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you.'
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Any of various hollow-horned, bearded ruminant mammals of the genus Capra, originally of mountainous areas of the Old World, especially any of the domesticated forms of C. hircus, raised for wool, milk, and meat.
(Goat, NCI Thesaurus)
You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
