worldbuilding

English

Alternative forms

• world-building, world building

Etymology

From world +‎ building.

Noun

worldbuilding (uncountable)

1. (fiction) The conception and description of a fictional world, often as the setting of a work of fiction, particularly in speculative fiction.
   • 2013 February 8, Charlie Jane Anders, “7 Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding”, in io9‎^[1], archived from the original on 25 November 2016:

     The purpose of worldbuilding isn't just to do a cool exercise, but to give a sense of place — and all of your thought experiments absolutely have to result in something vivid and alive.

   • 2015 May 20, Natasha Pulley, “Fantasy cannot build its imaginary worlds in short fiction”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     High fantasy of the George RR Martin kind hinges on world-building. When there really is a whole world to build, and not just a historical period or a particular country, world-building does not take a few paragraphs in a short story; it takes chapters.

2. (obsolete) Scientific research into the creation of the Earth and its geological features.
3. (obsolete) The world of imagination of novelists, poets, etc.

Synonyms

• conworlding
• geofiction

Coordinate terms

• worldbreaking
• worldmaking

Translations

act or process of building of a fictional world

• Armenian: աշխարհկառուցում (ašxarhkaṙucʻum)
• Czech: světotvorba f
• Esperanto: konstruo de la mondo, mirostrojeno
• Finnish: maailmanrakennus
• French: cosmopoésie (fr)
• German: Weltenbau m
• Kazakh: миростроение (mirostroenie)
• Korean: 세계 설정 (segye seoljeong)
• Kyrgyz: миростроение (mirostroyeniye)
• Russian: мирострои́тельство (ru) n (mirostroítelʹstvo), мирострое́ние n (mirostrojénije), построение мира n (postrojenije mira), создание мира n (sozdanije mira)
• Scots: warldbiggin
• Tagalog: paggawa ng daigdig
• Ukrainian: світотворення (svitotvorennja)
• Uzbek: mirastroeniе

References

• “What is 'World-Building'? And how do you spell it?”, in Merriam-Webster‎^[3], 2016