metaverse
noun

- immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds in which people interact as avatars with each other and with software agents, using sight, sound, and sometimes touch.

- a virtual world where humans, as avatars, interact with each other in a three-dimensional space that mimics reality.

- immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds in which people interact as avatars with each other and with software agents, using the metaphor of the real world but without its physical limitations.

Merriam-Webster, Cambridge English Dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The term "metaverse" burst into English lexicon as a futuristic portmanteau word in 1992, invented by science-fiction author Neal Stephenson in his cyberpunk novel "Snow Crash". He blended "meta-" from ancient Greek meta (μετά), meaning "after," "beyond," or "transcending" with "universe," from Latin universum ("all things").

In Stephenson‘s book, a sprawling, immersive virtual reality accessed via headsets, avatars roam a 3D digital expanse as an escape from dystopian 21st-century Los Angeles—a successor to the internet, blending social, economic, and escapist elements.

Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 rebranding of Facebook to “Meta” catapulted the term “metaverse” into mainstream English.

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EXPANDING LIFE

Today, the internet is evolving far beyond the flat screen. Millions of people are currently inhabiting shared 3D spaces—virtual environments that may not physically exist, yet feel deeply present and immersive. This shift is not just a technological trend; it represents a fundamental change in how we connect, explore, and express ourselves, unbound by the constraints of geography.

From businesses holding events in virtual conference rooms to artists selling digital creations in cyberspace, the metaverse is expanding the horizons of human experience, blurring the lines between the physical and the digital, and starting to look and feel as natural as anything offline.

Ultimately, the challenge of the metaverse is not in building these shared 3D spaces, but in deciding how we use them—not to escape life, but to safely expand it.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

3d web, alternate/augmented reality, computer simulation, cyber realm, cyberspace, data-verse, digital domain (realm, universe), extended reality (xr), holo-space, hyperverse, immersive space, METAVERSE, multiverse, networked reality, omniverse, online realm (universe), parallel universe, simulated reality (universe), superverse, vr space, virtual domain (environment, reality, world)

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SMUGGLE
 OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Some artists are already making a living by selling digital artworks inside the METAVERSE."

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P L E A S E   S U P P O R T   O W A D