Worldliness

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being worldly; familiarity with the ways of the world. countable, uncountable

    "There was a coarseness in the one which revolted the almost fastidious delicacy of the other; and Lady Marchmont, full of poetry, touched with romance and sentiment, had nothing in common with the harsh and hard worldliness of Lady Mary;..."

  2. 2
    concern with worldly affairs to the neglect of spiritual needs wordnet
  3. 3
    the quality or character of being intellectually sophisticated and worldly through cultivation or experience or disillusionment wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
sophisticationanimalismatomismbehaviorismcarnalitydialectical materialism

Example

More examples

"There was a coarseness in the one which revolted the almost fastidious delicacy of the other; and Lady Marchmont, full of poetry, touched with romance and sentiment, had nothing in common with the harsh and hard worldliness of Lady Mary;..."

Etymology

From Middle English worldlynesse, equivalent to worldly + -ness. Compare West Frisian wrâldlikens (“worldliness”), German Weltlichkeit (“worldliness”), Swedish världslighet (“worldliness”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.