microcosm
Other forms: microcosms
When you think of microcosm, picture your home town inside a snow globe. The teeny tiny city is a microcosm of the one you live in. It is that place in miniature.
Microcosm can be used to describe anything that is a miniature representation of something else. Think of a specific event that symbolizes the way things always seems to go, like the way a kind act by your mom can represent the caring relationship you have with her. That weekend with your partner that started with laughter but ended in tears? That's a microcosm of the whole lousy relationship. The dance where you regretted your outfit, giggled with friends, annoyed a teacher, and missed your chance at dancing with your crush? A microcosm of high school.
-
a miniature model of something
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing microcosm
The top 1,000 vocabulary words have been carefully chosen to represent difficult but common words that appear in everyday academic and business writing. These words are also the most likely to appear on the SAT, ACT, GRE, and ToEFL. To create this list, we started with the words that give our users the most trouble and then ranked them by how frequently they appear in our corpus of billions of words from edited sources. If you only have time to study one list of words, this is the list.
This memoir recounts Noah's childhood in South Africa during the last years of apartheid.