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World War from WikiPedia:

A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span several continents, and last for multiple years. The term has usually been applied to two conflicts of unprecedented scale that occurred during the 20th century: World War I (1914–1918), World War II (1939–1945), although in retrospect a number of earlier conflicts may be regarded as "world wars". The other most common usage of the term[by whom?] is in the context of World War III[citation needed], a phrase usually used to describe any hypothetical future global conflict.

The term "World War" was coined speculatively in the early 20th century, some years before the first World War broke out, probably as a nearly literal translation of the German word 'Weltkrieg' German writer August Wilhelm Otto Niemann had used the word in the title of his anti-British novel Der Weltkrieg: Deutsche Träume ("The World War: German Dreams") as early as 1904, published in English as The coming conquest of England. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first known usage in the English language as being in April 1909, in the pages of the Westminster Gazette.

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