"secondary world" meaning in English

See secondary world in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: secondary worlds [plural]
Etymology: Coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in his 1947 essay "On Fairy-Stories". Head templates: {{en-noun}} secondary world (plural secondary worlds)
  1. (fantasy) An internally consistent, fictional, fantasy world or setting that is different from the real "primary world". Wikipedia link: J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories Categories (topical): Fantasy, Fictional universes, J. R. R. Tolkien, Worldbuilding Synonyms: fantasy world, imaginary world Related terms: high fantasy
    Sense id: en-secondary_world-en-noun-l7NoXs0t Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Topics: fantasy

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "Coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in his 1947 essay \"On Fairy-Stories\".",
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          "name": "Fantasy",
          "orig": "en:Fantasy",
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          "text": "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.",
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          "ref": "2004, Holly Virginia Blackford, “It's Like a Fantasy World”, in Out of this World: Why Literature Matters to Girls, Teachers College Press, →ISBN, page 48:",
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          "ref": "2012, Jane Suzanne Carroll, “The Sanctuary Topos”, in Landscape in Children's Literature, Routledge, →ISBN, page 26:",
          "text": "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.",
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        "(fantasy) An internally consistent, fictional, fantasy world or setting that is different from the real \"primary world\"."
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  "word": "secondary world"
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  "word": "secondary world"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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