ecumene
- noun
- /ˈɛkjʊˌmiːni/
- Specialized
:
ecumene
- Various factors such as climate and geography shape the ecumene of a region, determining where people can live.
Examples
-
He argued that Amazonia must be fully settled and made part of the national ecumene with domestic, not foreign, resources.
Academic text (1992) -
Human horizons expand from bounded communities to a larger ecumene.
Academic text (1997) -
It has also been signaled as a characteristic of the global ecumene.
Academic text (2002) -
The quest for energy, the source of a new great game between Russia and the United States, cannot be understood or separated from more traditional and competitive geostrategies, aiming to integrate the Transcaspian into a Western or Russian ecumene.
Academic text (2000) -
The concept of ecumene refers to regions where human populations have established their communities and cultures.
-
In his studies, he focused on the ecumene of ancient civilizations to understand their influence on modern society.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Etymology
Ecumene comes from the Greek word oikoumenē, based on oikos which means 'house' or 'home'. So it originally named the parts of the world where people live — thinking of the known world as one big inhabited 'home', which is why it now means the inhabited or habitable regions of the world.