Kleinwereld

Kleinwereld, literally “small world” in Dutch, is a term used in multiple contexts. In everyday language it refers to a restricted or local environment, a person’s intimate circle, or a limited perspective on broader events. It can describe social circles that are tightly connected or communities with a narrow view of outside phenomena.

In science and network theory, kleinwereld commonly appears as the Dutch rendering of the concept small-world networks. These are networks that combine a high degree of local clustering with relatively short global separation between nodes. The idea gained prominence from the work of Watts and Strogatz in the late 1990s and is used to model a range of systems, including social networks, the Internet, and biological networks. Small-world networks help explain how large systems maintain local cohesion while still enabling rapid information or influence spread across the whole network. Key ideas associated with small-worlds include clustering coefficients, average path length, and the notion of small-world-ness.

Etymology: the word is formed from klein (small) and wereld (world). Dutch usage varies, and the term may appear as kleinwereld or as two words, depending on stylistic conventions.

See also: small-world phenomenon, six degrees of separation, network theory, clustering, path length.

In cultural and educational contexts, kleinwereld is used metaphorically to describe tightly knit communities or limited domains of knowledge, without referring to a specific proper noun or brand.