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microcosm Definition

micro·cosm (mī′krō kä′zəm)

noun

a little world; miniature universe; specif.,

  1. man regarded as an epitome of the world
  2. a community regarded as a miniature or epitome of the world
  3. Ecol. a small ecosystem, as a pond

Etymology: ME microcosme < ML microcosmus < LGr mikros kosmos, little world: see micro- & cosmos

microcosm Related Forms
mi′cro·cos′·mic adjective mi′cro·cos′·mi·cally adverb
microcosm Usage Examples

Preposition: of

  • society: The seminar became a microcosm of an inclusive society.
  • world: Overall the Island is a microcosm of the world of flowers.
  • life: It is a place where workers work and build a microcosm of life.
  • whole: It is a microcosm of the whole of Africa and more people should discover its riches.
  • history: With other texts illuminating the reigns and politics of other rulers, the archive offers a microcosm of late Anglo-Saxon history.
  • country: The Loughborough constituency is a microcosm of the whole country.

Converse of object

  • represent: The disk in many ways represents a microcosm of the series itself.
  • become: The Web has become a microcosm of our society.
  • present: John Lillyman's active political side presents a fascinating microcosm of the age in which we live.
  • use: Using Microcosm, the group has developed a distributed link service in order to allow users to create their own links to documents.
  • offer: Close examination of the class of Franz Schreker offers an ideal microcosm of European twentieth century music.
  • create: Overview The city's mosaic of different nationalities has created a dynamic microcosm, making Toronto the cultural heart of English Canada.

Modifies a noun

  • viewer: Microcosm viewers may also be asked to start up with the focus at any particular point in the data.
  • experiment: Microcosm experiments further showed that transgenic DNA added to soil, was taken up by soil bacteria.
  • architecture: The remainder of this paper discusses re-engineering of the Microcosm architecture to allow object oriented support services and an improved interface for media interaction.
  • model: Links The Microcosm model allows the user to navigate by a number of different layers of link mechanism.
  • system: The current Microcosm system contains no examples of viewer to viewer communication.
  • message: Microcosm Messages Microcosm 2.0 treats the message as an object.

Noun used with modifier

  • laboratory: This bulletin describes the final results from Project SABER, and focuses on a laboratory microcosm study.
  • soil: Data from these studies will be used to identify grasses to be grown in soil microcosms.
microcosm Quotes

Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm of little world,I find myself something more than the great. There is surelya piece of divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.

—Browne, SirThomas