世界(shì jiè) - world, the whole world in Mandarin

A compound of 世 (shì) 'generation, age, world' and 界 (jiè) 'boundary, realm'. 世 is an ideograph once read as three tens, suggesting a span of generations; 界 is a phono-semantic compound with 田 (field) as radical and 介 (jiè) as phonetic. Together they mean 'the world'.

Origin

compound

Root

世 (shì, age/generation) + 界 (jiè, realm: 田 field + 介 phonetic)