Word To Use Today: world.

The world is too much with us, said William Wordsworth.

But then here we are, stuck on the flipping thing, and there's really not a lot any of us can do about it. 

Well, I suppose we could go on a lot of long-haul flights...

...or buy a pogo-stick.

The ancient world was a much more harmonious place than ours. The Latin word for world, mundus, meant clean or elegant; the Greek word for world, cosmos meant orderly arrangement.

Our English idea of the world comes from somewhere quite different. The Old English weorold is made up of two pieces. The weor bit was to do with man, and the eld bit meant age. So for us the world is the Age of Man.

And what a piece of work is man!

There is another place called The World within our reach. This a man-made collection of islands off the coast of Dubai. Unfortunately only one of them has a building on it, and the rumour is that they're all sinking back into the sea.

The News of the World is a British Tabloid Sunday Newspaper. It will cease publication on the 10th July 2011 after a series of phone-hacking scandals, most recently involving phones belonging to an abducted child, and also to the relatives of other murder victims.

I believe the world will be a sweeter place for its demise.