HomeServicesBlogDictionariesContactSpanish Course
← Back to search

Meaning of secondary world | Babel Free

Noun CEFR B2

Definitions

An internally consistent, fictional, fantasy world or setting that is different from the real "primary world".

Examples

“What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.”
“From beginning to end of the fiction we are in the secondary world.”
“The girls stress the internal logic of the Secondary World as the crucial point for fantasy pleasure. Mastering the elaborate structure of the Secondary World is part and parcel of the reader's quest to experience a text such as Harry Potter, although the central hero would identify the text as masculine.”
“The world to which the protagonist belongs is the 'primary' or 'domestic' world. The secondary world is often a binary opposite of the primary world; an inverse, or mirror-image of the consensual reality of the text.”

CEFR level

B2
Upper Intermediate
This word is part of the CEFR B2 vocabulary — upper intermediate level.

See also

Learn this word in context

See secondary world used in real conversations inside our free language course.

Start Free Course