maailm

Maailm is an Estonian noun meaning "the world" or "the universe". It denotes the totality of space, time, matter, and events that are perceived, known, or imagined. In everyday speech, maailm most often refers to the world as the place where people live, and less commonly to the Earth as a planet in a broad sense or to the wider cosmos.

In philosophy and cultural discourse, maailm can denote the humanly meaningful reality that a person or community experiences. It can refer to the natural world, the social world, or the world of ideas and art. The term is used in phrases describing scale or perspective, such as the whole world or the world of a culture. It also appears in compound expressions that address global or international contexts and worldviews.

Maailm is native to Estonian and belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. The word is used across contexts to express either a general reality or a more specific sense of the world in discussions of science, philosophy, or culture. In scientific contexts, other terms may be used to denote Earth or the cosmos specifically, while maailm remains the broader, everyday concept of reality.