Refers to all less developed countries as a group. Term was coined by Alfred Sauvy during the Cold War, when the first world was the developed capitalist countries and the second world was the communi [..]

Refers to poor, underdeveloped nations in South Africa, Asia and South America.

1963, from French tiers monde, formulated 1952 by French economic historian Alfred Sauvy (1898-1990) on model of the third estate (French tiers état) of Revolutionary France; his first world (The West [..]

see economically less developed countries.

During the Cold War, this became the term for developing countries, because most of them weren't aligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union. It became inaccurate long before the end of the Cold War, because China clearly wasn't aligned with the Soviet Union and many Third World nations did align with one of the first two wo [..]

Definition Underdeveloped nations, such as in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Designation accorded in western parlance to the “developing world” as a whole. The term originated in the context of the Cold War, when the notion was popular that the planet consisted of three “world [..]

A term sometimes used to refer to the economically poor, politically and militarily weak, relatively unstable, and dependent states of the world, most of which emerged from colonialism in fairly recen [..]

A term used to describe the world’s poorer countries, distinct from the First World (developed capitalist) and Second World (developed communist, or, today, ex-communist).

A very vague term used to describe those regions of the world in which levels of development, applying such measures as GDP, are significantly below those of the economically more advanced regions. The term is increasingly seen as an inadequate description of the prevailing world situation since it fails to describe a significant amount of internal [..]

Those countries not aligned with the west or the east during the Cold War. (sometimes pejorative) The developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.