MAN OF THE WORLD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does man of the world mean? 

• MAN OF THE WORLD (noun)
  The noun MAN OF THE WORLD has 1 sense:

1. a worldly-wise person

  Familiarity information: MAN OF THE WORLD used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MAN OF THE WORLD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A worldly-wise person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

man of the world; sophisticate

Hypernyms ("man of the world" is a kind of...):

adult; grownup (a fully developed person from maturity onward)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "man of the world"):

cosmopolitan; cosmopolite (a sophisticated person who has travelled in many countries)

slicker (a person with good manners and stylish clothing)

 Context examples 

He was not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better than she had expected.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Mr. Craven, a fresh-faced, alert man of the world, was the only one of us who seemed to preserve both his wits and his appetite.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am afraid I am not quite so much the man of the world as might be good for me in some points.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I want your opinion as a judicious man—as a man of the world.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He is older than Arthur, a man of the world to his finger-tips, one who had been everywhere, seen everything, a brilliant talker, and a man of great personal beauty.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As a man of the world, Colonel, you know that men do not carry other people’s bills about in their pockets.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

After a moment's embarrassment the lady replied, You are too much a man of the world not to see with the eyes of the world.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

That a man of the world, five-and-forty years of age, shrewd, honest, and acquainted with Courts, should be beguiled by such crude and coarse homage, amazed me, as it did all who knew him; but you who have seen much of life do not need to be told how often the strongest and noblest nature has its one inexplicable weakness, showing up the more obviously in contrast to the rest, as the dark stain looks the fouler upon the whitest sheet.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Without studying the business, however, or knowing what he was about, Edmund was beginning, at the end of a week of such intercourse, to be a good deal in love; and to the credit of the lady it may be added that, without his being a man of the world or an elder brother, without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)