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Definitionally, no, although that question becomes interesting for a different reason. The first world was "countries allied with the US against the godless Co

Definitionally, no, although that question becomes interesting for a different reason. The first world was "countries allied with the US against the godless Commies", the second world was "the godless Commies", and the third world was "everyone else, where we fight the proxy wars between the first and second worlds, for the soul of mankind". Second world no longer really means anything since the collapse of the Soviet Union, of course, and first/third world has become a euphemism for "ok/shitty country". By the old definitions, the US falling out of the third world becomes much more interesting.

marcus_holmes 9y ago
hmm, that's not the definition I was taught. "First World" or "Old World" meant the civilised European countries (both West and East) "Second World" or "New World" was countries colonised by Europe, such as the USA. "Third World" meant countries still in whatever benighted state of uncivilised savagery that they had before the Europeans enlightened them. Yes, I'm being ironic. But these were the literal terms and attitude during my education (1970's UK). It was only vaguely recognised that the USA was properly part of the First World and not some uppity colony that was too big for its boots. I also learned a different definition, later, in Economics: - First World economies are based on trading information - Second World economies are manufacturing-based - Third World economies are resource-based This definition causes arguments at Australian dinner parties ;) Interesting how the terms are defined differently by different people for different reasons.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  The ngram viewer suggests that if such a terminology was ever commonly used, it was suspiciously correlated with the Cold War: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=first+world%2Csecond+world%2Cthird+world&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=first+world%2C...

marcus_holmes 9y ago

hmm, that's not the definition I was taught. "First World" or "Old World" meant the civilised European countries (both West and East) "Second World" or "New World" was countries colonised by Europe, such as the USA. "Third World" meant countries still in whatever benighted state of uncivilised savagery that they had before the Europeans enlightened them. Yes, I'm being ironic. But these were the literal terms and attitude during my education (1970's UK). It was only vaguely recognised that the USA was properly part of the First World and not some uppity colony that was too big for its boots. I also learned a different definition, later, in Economics: - First World economies are based on trading information - Second World economies are manufacturing-based - Third World economies are resource-based This definition causes arguments at Australian dinner parties ;) Interesting how the terms are defined differently by different people for different reasons.

saalweachter 9y ago
The ngram viewer suggests that if such a terminology was ever commonly used, it was suspiciously correlated with the Cold War: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=first+world%2Csecond+world%2Cthird+world&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=first+world%2C...